
Book . 9^35 
GqpyrigTit^? 



CQHRIGHT DEPOSm 









WILD FOLK 




THE PINCUSHION OF THE WOODS 



WILD FOLK 



By 
SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr. 

AUTHOR OP "EVERYDAY ADVENTURES" 




With Illustrations by 
CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL 

AND 

CARTON MOOREPARK 



The ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
BOSTON 






Copyright, 1922, by 
Samuel Scoville, Jr. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



JUN -3 1922 

ICU661973 



K7 



To my Son 

Gurdon Trumbull Scoville 

who has learned to know 

and love so many of our Lesser Brethren 

of Earth and Air and Water 

this book is dedicated 





CONTENTS 








I. 


The Cleanlts ...... 1 


II. 


Blackbear 








24 


III. 


The Seventh Sleeper 








51 


IV. 


High Sky .... 








74 


V. 


The Little People . 








85 


VI. 


The Path of the Air 








107 


VII. 


Blackcat .... 








122 


VIII. 


Little Death 








137 


IX. 


Blackcross 








150 


X. 


Sea Otter . 








171 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Pincushion of the Woods . 








Frontispiece 


The First Journey 








4 


Bull Moose and Blackbear 








44 


The Thief . 






• , 


62 


The Safe Rabbit . 








130 


The Killers . 








140 


The Fox Family . 








154 


Death in the Dark . 








. • . 158 



WILD FOLK 

I 

THE CLEANLYS 

All winter long the Barrens had slept still and 
white. Rows and regiments of low pitch-pine trees, 
whose blue-green needles grow in threes instead of 
the fives of the white or the twos of the Virginia pines, 
marched for miles and miles across the drifted snow. 
Through their tops forever sounded the far-away 
roar of the surf of the upper air, like the rushing 
of mighty wings, while overhead hung a sky whose 
cold blue seemed flecked with frost. The air tingled 
with the spicery of myriads of pine trees. Grim 
black buzzards, on fringed, motionless wings, wheeled 
and veered over this land of silence. 

Then, with the suddenness of the South, spring 
came. The woods became a shimmering pool of 
changing greens. The down-folded leaves of the 
little lambskill stood erect again, like rabbits' ears, 
over claret-colored flowers, and the soft warm air 
was sweet with the heavy perfume of cream-white 
magnolia blossoms. On jade-green pools gleamed 
the buds of yellow pond-lilies, like lumps of floating 
gold, and the paler golden-club, whose blossoms look 
like the tongues of calla lilies. Everywhere, as if 

l 



2 WILD FOLK 

set in snow, gleamed the green-and-gold of the Bar- 
rens' heather above the white sand, which had been 
the bed of some sea, forgotten a million years ago. 
In the distance, at the edges of the Barrens, were 
glimpses of far-away meadows, all hazy with blue 
toad-flax and rimmed with the pale gold of narrow- 
leaved sundrops with their deep orange centres. 

Through the woods wound a deep creek, whose 
water was stained brown and steeped sweet with a 
million cedar roots. Unlike the singing streams of 
the Xorth, this brook ran stilly, cutting its deep way 
through gold-and-white sand, and meeting never 
rock nor stone to make it murmur. On its bank 
in the deepest part of the woods grew a vast sweet- 
gum tree, covered with star-shaped leaves. Tangles 
of barbed greenbrier set with fierce curved thorns, 
and stretches of sphagnum bogs guarded the tree 
from the land side. In the enormous hollow trunk, 
some fifty feet above the ground, a black hole showed. 

There, one May afternoon, as the sun was wester- 
ing far down the sky, a small face appeared suddenly, 
framed in the dark opening. It was a funny little 
face, surmounted by broad, pricked-up, pointed 
ears, and masked by a black band, which stretched 
from above a pair of twinkling golden eyes clear 
down to a small pointed muzzle. As the owner of 
the face came out of the hollow and began to creep 
slowly and cautiously down the side of the great tree, 
his fur showed in the sunlight a dull brownish-gray, 
with black-tipped hairs on the back, while those on 
the round little belly had white ends. Last of all 



THE CLEANLYS 3 

appeared the black-ringed, cylindrical tail which is 
the hall-mark of the aracoun, raccoon, or coon, as 
red, white, and black men have variously named the 
owner of said tail. 

This particular little coon was the youngest of 
four fuzzy, cuddly, blind babies, which had appeared 
in the old den-tree early in March. His father was 
a wary, battle-scarred giant among his kind, who 
weighed thirty pounds, measured three feet from 
the tip of his pointed nose to the end of his ringed 
tail, and was afraid of nothing that crawled, ran, 
swam, or flew. 

As the little coon walked carefully, head-first, 
down the tree, he showed his kinship to the bears 
by setting the naked black soles of his little hind feet 
flat, instead of walking on his toes as most of the 
flesh-eaters do. His forepaws were like tiny black 
hands, with a very short little ringer and the thumb 
the same length as the other three long, supple 
fingers. 

It was the first time that this particular youngster 
had ever ventured out of the home-nest. A great 
bump in the middle of the trunk was his undoing. 
He crept over the edge, but in reaching down for a 
safe grip beyond, lost his hold and, with a wail of 
terror, fell headlong. Fortunately for him, the 
gum was surrounded on three sides by shallow pools 
of standing water. Into one of these the young 
climber fell with a splash, and a second later was 
swimming for dear life back to his family tree. 

At the very first sound of that little SOS the head 



WILD FOLK 



zg 122 :he ~2:e2\ she h\277:ei 
1 procession by the rest of 
entry resorred not to miss 

sie i-rizir ~: :ie :\izir. 
2rer h;i reniei rhe rruri 
l Fixing Ins sharp dswi 

:r. be-'ira.g'.alri. ™e:. 

lingers :: i:"'e. 

:r_:e turned back.. 
th her, and the re- 

■ 2 : .r r 2e Lr^e 57 

::^l full" 2.5 127 2 5 

ie. There his :eel- 



of Mother Coon appeal 
other small heads peerD 
ing the little coon strug 
down the tree, follow e: 
the family, who had e\ 
2:27722272*. By ~he 222222 she 
however, the small adrenturer 1 
from which he had f alien, F 
into the bark, he climbed up the 
and much shocked at the manif 
See^* 2:222 size. Mrs. C ::i 
The three little coons turned 
tsed procession started up to 
of the family climbed slowly ai 
the bump, whimpering 1 all the 
2r_*s :~er:.2z:e 22222. He ~es p:s:r>e 222: :ee: 
had any little coon sufl 
2722 iziktzL 2722 nis-e: 
deserted him. 

Err, err, err," he began to cry, softly, but exceed- 

It was too much even for Mother Coon's stern 
ideals of chfld-training. Once again she crept down 
the tree and, stopping 
firmly into the bark, 
she reached down and 
but gently by the loose 
27:22227 5~"27*_r* hi;:: 5.2 :V 
her forepaws Then, u 
from her pointed nose, 
toward the den, from v 



e: ire. 
1 — his 



He 



772 



— 



22227 . rlxei her :h 
\g far orer the edge, 
-he h::'e :•■:■::: 27772.! 7 
lis neck and, turning 




THE FIRST JOURNEY 



THE CLEANLYS 5 

down. At times the memory of his grief would be 
too bitter to be borne, and he would stop and whimper 
and make little soft, sobbing noises. Then Mother 
Coon would pat him comfortingly with her slim, 
graceful paws and urge him on until at last he was 
safely home again. So ended well, after all, the 
first journey into the world of any of this little 
family. 

By this time the sun was set, and the old coon 
climbed down the tree to the nearest pool, for a bit 
of supper. As she approached, there were squeaks 
and splashes, and several cricket frogs dived into the 
water ahead of her. Wading in, she looked around 
at the woods and the tree-tops in the darkening light, 
in a vacant way, as if frogs were the very last thing 
she had in mind ; but under the water her slim fingers 
were exploring every inch of the oozy bottom with 
such lightning-like speed, that in less than a minute 
three frogs had been caught, killed by a skillful nip, 
and thrown up on the dry bank. Convinced that 
there were no more left in the pool, she approached 
her supper-table; but before she would eat came the 
ceremony and ritual of her tribe and blood. 

No raccoon, in winter or summer, by night or by 
day, at home or in captivity, will willingly eat any 
unwashed food except green corn. One by one the 
dead frogs were plunged under the water from which 
they had just been taken, and were washed and 
re-washed and rubbed and scrubbed, until they were 
clean enough to suit Mrs. Coon. Then, and not 
until then, were they daintily eaten. Thereafter soft 



6 WILD FOLK 

little chirring calls from the tree-top said that her 
babies were ready for their supper, too; and she 
climbed back to the nest, where they snuggled against 
her and nuzzled and cuddled and drank of the warm 
milk which would not flow much longer for them, 
since mother raccoons wean their children early. 

While they were still at supper, there sounded 
from the black depths of the pine forest a long whick- 
ering " Whoo-oo-oo-oo," much like the wailing call 
of the screech-owl. It was Father Coon on his way 
home from where he had been spending the night 
in one of his outlying hunting-lodges, of which he had 
several within a radius of a few miles; and a little 
later he joined the family. He brought Mother 
Coon a little tidbit in the shape of a fresh-water mus- 
sel, which, although the shell was still dripping, she 
climbed down and washed before she cracked and 
ate it like a nut. 

After supper, the two started off on a hunting- 
trip, while the babies curled up in a round ball, to 
sleep until they came back. The gray hour just 
before dawn found the hunters crouched in the long 
marshy grass at the very tip of a point of land that 
ran into a little pond, which was ringed around with 
the stunted pines of the Barrens. Just as the first 
light showed in the sky, a flock of mallards, headed 
by a magnificent drake with a bright green head, 
swung in to feed. Never a sign nor sound betrayed 
the presence of the ambushers until the drake reached 
the edge of the shore. The startled bird had not 
even time for one quack before there was a splash, 



THE CLEANLYS 7 

and old Father Coon had twisted that gay and gal- 
lant neck and was back on the shore again, with the 
quivering body thrown over his shoulder. 

Part of the duck was washed and eaten then and 
there, and the rest was carried back to the den-tree, 
where the four little coons were taught to tear off 
little strips of the rich, dark meat, and to wash them 
repeatedly before eating. That first taste of flesh and 
blood forever barred them from the warm milky 
fountain which had been theirs before. From this 
time on, they had to hunt for themselves. 

The very next night their education began. In 
the warm fragrant dusk, the whole family trotted 
in a long, leisurely procession through the under- 
brush, until they came to a broad bank of warm, white 
sand that overhung the deep waters of the stream 
which wound its silent way like a brown snake through 
the Barrens. Here, in a half-circle, the whole family 
crouched and dozed comfortably, with their pointed, 
striped noses on their forepaws, while the dusk deep- 
ened into the soft-scented, velvet blackness of a sum- 
mer night. For long they stayed there, in the still 
patience which only the wild folk possess. 

At last, over the tips of the pointed cedars the 
moon rose, and turned the white beach to silver. All 
at once, from where a sand spit sloped gradually into 
the water, sounded a tiny splash, and out into the 
moonlight crawled a monstrous, misshapen object. 
From under a vast black shell ridged with dull yellow 
a snaky neck stretched this way and that, surmounted 
by a fierce head, with a keen, edged beak and gleam- 



8 WILD FOLK 

ing, cruel eyes which stared up and down the whole 
beach. It was a snapper, one of the largest of its 
kind, which weighed perhaps half-a-hundred pounds 
and would have filled a small washtub. 

As the great turtle crawled slowly up the bank, 
the little coons crouched tensely, and turned their 
heads to see how the veteran hunters of the family 
proposed to attack this demon of the stream. As if 
asleep, both of them crouched motionless; for long 
ago they had learned that watchful waiting is the 
best policy when Mrs. Snapper comes out of the 
water of a spring night. Back ancl forth the monster 
crawled heavily, stopping to look and listen for min- 
utes at a time. Satisfied at last that no danger 
threatened her on that lonely beach, she chose a little 
ridge of loose sand not ten feet from the raccoon 
family, and scrabbling with her hind legs and thrust- 
ing with her thick, strong tail in the warm sand, dug 
herself in. There she stayed all the night through, 
until she had laid a couple of hundred parchment- 
covered, cylindrical eggs, the greatest delicacy on the 
whole bill of fare of the hunting folk. 

Just before dawn, she pulled herself heavily out of 
the hole she had dug, and the loose sand poured in 
after her, filling the cavity and covering the eggs 
that were hidden there. Not until the turtle had 
smoothed over the displaced sand and waddled back 
into the stream did the head of the raccoon family 
make a movement. He was no coward, but he knew 
too much to trust his slim paws or his pointed nose 
anywhere near Mrs. Snapper's shearing jaws. 



THE CLEANLYS 9 

When the brown water at last closed over her mon- 
strous body, Father Coon led his waiting family to 
the bank and deftly uncovered the newly laid eggs, 
on which they feasted until sunrise sent them back 
to bed. 

As the freshness of spring melted into the hot, 
green sweetness of summer, the education of the little 
Cleanlys went on rapidly. They soon became ex- 
perts in breakfast-botany, and learned to dig for the 
nutty tubers of the wild bean, with its brown purple 
blossoms, the spicy roots of the wild sarsaparilla, with 
its five ashlike leaves and fuzzy ball of white blos- 
soms, the wild ginger, the spatterdock, and a score 
or so of other pleasant-tasting wild vegetables. 
They learned, too, how to hunt frogs, and to grub 
up mussels, and to catch those little fresh-water 
lobsters, the crawfish, without getting their fingers 
nipped. 

The Cleanly children made few mistakes, and 
hardly ever disobeyed their parents. There was a 
reason. Disobedience among the wild folk means 
death, and he who makes one mistake often never 
gets a chance to make another. The sister of the 
littlest coon was a sad example of this fact. She de- 
cided to become a reformer. It seemed to her that 
it would be pleasanter to hunt by daylight than after 
dark, so she tried it — once. On her first (and last) 
trip she met old Sam Carpenter, a Piny, who always 
carried a shotgun with him. 

Of course, accidents will happen in wild-folk fami- 
lies just as among us humans, only in a wild-folk 



10 WILD FOLK 

family, an accident is more apt to be fatal. It was 
the oldest of the three little Cleanlys, after the re- 
former had gone., who suffered first. He had been 
hunting in the wildest part of the five-mile circle, 
which the family used, and it was after sunrise when 
he scrambled out of the shallow pool where he had 
been frosrsrinsr. 

Suddenly from a diy dense thicket near by, there 
was a fierce hiss like escaping steam, and from a 
tangle of fern darted the mottled brown-and-white 
length of a great pine snake. Its curious pointed 
head, with its golden, imwinking eves, shot forward, 
and the next second a set of sharp teeth closed on 
the soft nose of the small coon. L'nlike the poison 
people, the pine snake has no fangs, and its teeth are 
used only to hold its prey for the grip of its choking. 
crushing coils. This particular snake was nearly 
eight feet long, and as thick around as a big man's 
wrist. Luckily for the little coon, the thick bushes 
guarded him for an instant against the smothering 
coils. 

Dragging back from the dreadful glare of the 
fixed, lidless eyes, he tried to tear loose, and squalled 
with all his micfht for his mother. Fortunatelv for 
him. she was not far away. Anyone who had ever 
watched Mrs. Coon climb carefully down a tree- 
trunk, or move deliberately through the thickets, 
would never have identified her with the furious figure 
which flashed through the bushes at the very first cry 
of the little coon. Before the great snake had time 
to draw its coils clear of the branches, or even to 



THE CLEANLYS 11 

disengage its head to meet the attack, the raccoon was 
upon it, and sank her sharp teeth through the 
reptile's spine just back of its head. At once the 
shut jaws gaped, and the little coon sprang back 
from the heavy body, which writhed and twisted 
and beat the bushes horribly in its death agony. 

Mother Coon was always practical, with an open 
mind in regard to matters of diet, and while her cub 
whimperingly licked, with a long, pink tongue, a 
much-abused little nose, she began to strip off the 
speckled skin of her late opponent, and to convert 
it into lengths of firm, white meat on which the whole 
raccoon family fed full that night. 

It was the youngest of the family who was the 
next victim. Again it was Mother Coon whose love 
and wisdom and courage outweighed chance on the 
scales of life and death. He had been exploring the 
shallows of the stream near a deserted cranberry bog. 
All the raccoon people like to follow the shallows 
of a stream, on the chance of picking up frogs, mus- 
sels, crawfish, and other water-food. A solitary 
rock off a tiny island, in shallow water close to the 
bank, is always a favorite spot for a hunting coon. 
Old Sam Carpenter knew all about raccoon habits, 
and also about one of their weaknesses. 

On this night the latest-born of the family came 
splashing down the warm shallows, and half waded 
and half swam out to a tiny sandbar some six feet 
from the bank. There he crouched and scanned the 
water in the moonlight, on the chance that he might 
catch a sluggish, red-finned sucker as it winnowed the 



12 WILD FOLK 

water through its long wrinkled tube of a mouth. 
Suddenly, against the yellow sand, he saw three or 
four gleaming, silver disks, brighter even than the 
silver-scaled shiners which he had often tried vainly 
to catch. Old Sam had begged from a traveling 
tinker a few scraps of bright tin and strewn them 
near the little islet. 

No raccoon can help investigating anything that 
glistens in the water, and this one felt that he must 
have his hands on that treasure-trove. Wading 
carefully out into the shallows, he dabbled in the sand 
with his slim forepaws, trying to draw some of the 
shining pieces in to shore. Suddenly there was a 
snap that sent the water flying, a horrible grinding 
pain, and the slender ringers of his right forepaw 
were caught between the wicked jaws of a hidden 
steel trap. 

" Oo-oo-oo-oo !" he cried, with the sorrowful wail 
of a hurt baby coon. 

But this time Mother Coon was far away, around 
two bends of the crooked stream, investigating a 
newly found mussel bed. The little coon tried in 
vain to pull away from the cruel jaws, but they held 
him unrelentingly. Then he attempted to gnaw his 
way loose, but only broke his keen little teeth on the 
stubborn iron. 

At first, he was easily able to keep himself above 
the water; yet, as the minutes went by, the unremit- 
ting weight of the trap forced him under more 
and more often, to rest from the weary, sagging 
pain. Each time that he went down, it seemed 



THE CLEANLYS 13 

easier and easier to stay there, and to slip into 
oblivion under the glimmering water and forget 
the torture that racked every nerve in his struggling 
little body. Yet, in spite of his funny face and quiet 
ways, the little coon came of a battling breed which 
never gives up. Once more he struggled up from 
the soothing coolness of the water, and for the last 
time his cry for help shuddered faintly across the 
Barrens. At last and at last, far away down the 
stream, he heard the snap of a broken branch, and a 
minute later the rapid pad-pad of flying feet along 
the sand, as he fought weakly to stay above the sur- 
face, sure that the coming of his mother meant res- 
cue from all the treacheries that beset him. 

In another minute she had reached the bank, and 
with a bound, her fur bristling, was beside her cub, 
ready to fight for him to the last drop of blood in her 
lithe, powerful body. Fortunately for her cub, the 
years had brought to Mother Coon wisdom as well 
as courage. Once certain as to what had happened, 
she decided instantly upon the stern and only answer 
which the wild folk have for the snares of their cruel 
human brethren. She waded out so that her back 
was under the exhausted little body of her cub, and, 
ducking under, gripped the trap with one of her 
flexible hands, strained the little paw away from it 
with the other and with a few quick slashes of her 
sharp teeth severed the three black, slim little fingers 
that the bitter jaws held fast. 

As she cut off one after the other, she could feel 
the warm furry body that rested upon hers thrill 



14 WILD FOLK 



.- r- -i 



:u:"er with the pain; but never a sound 
nor a struggle came from the littlest of the coons. 
Another minute, and slowly and limpingly he was 
creeping back to the den-tree. Better, alas, for 
any child of the wild folk to go maimed and halt 
through life than to fall alive into the hands of us 
humans ! 

The weeks went by. Summer waxed, until the 
Barrens were green waves, starred and spangled 
with flowers, and echoing with bird- songs. All 
through the long, warm, flower -scented nights the 
raccoon family feasted and frolicked, and the little 
ones grew apace. One velvety warm night, when 
the crescent moon, had sunk in the west. Father Coon 
led his family toward the farm lands, which year 
year crept farther into the Barrens. Beyond the 
woods they came to a field of towering stalks, whose 
rustling leaves i^ershadowed plump ears of creamy 
Darn, swathed in green husks and wound with soft 
sQk. At the sight the leaders for once seemed to 
forget all their cauti:: 

Into the Geld they rushed, like mad things, and, 
pulling down stalk after stalk, they stripped off the 
husks from an ear. and took a bite or so of the angel- 
food beneath, only to cast it aside and grasp another. 
The little coons followed their parent- example, 
and pulled and hauled and tore and chanked among 
the standing corn, until it looked as if a herd of 
hungry cows had been there. The feasting kept on 
until every coon, big and little, was brimming full 
of melting, creamy corn. 



THE CLEANLYS 15 

As they ambled contentedly back toward the dense 
woods, there came a sound which made Father Coon 
hurry them forward. Scarcely had they reached 
the edge of the first thicket, when across the field 
dashed three mongrel hounds, which belonged to 
Sam Carpenter, and were out hunting to-night on 
their own account. There was no time to gain the 
shelter of the trees. Just ahead of them one edge 
of the stream touched the cleared country, while its 
farther bank was deep in the Barrens. Following 
their leader, the whole family took to the water. 
They had hardly reached the middle of the wide 
stream when, with a splash, the dogs plunged in, 
only a few yards behind. Immediately Father Coon 
dropped back, for when it comes to matters of life 
and death it is always Father Coon who fights first. 
To-night, in spite of numbers, the odds were all in 
his favor; for the raccoon is the second cousin of 
those great water-weasels, the mink and the otter, 
and it is as dangerous to attack him in the water 
as to fight a porcupine in his tree or a bear in his den. 

The first of the pack was a yellow hound, who 
looked big and fierce enough to tackle anything. 
With a gasping bay, he ploughed forward, open- 
mouthed, to grip that silent, black-masked figure 
which floated so lightly in front of him — only to 
find it gone. At his plunge the raccoon had dived 
deep, a trick which no dog has yet learned. A 
second later, from behind, a slim sinewy hand closed 
like a clamp on the dog's foreleg, too far forward 
to be reached by his snapping jaws. As the hound 



16 WILD FOLK 

lowered his head, vainly trying to bite, the raccoon 
reached across with his other paw, and gripped his 
opponent smotheringly by the muzzle. 

Slowly, inexorably, he threw his weight against 
the dog's head, until it sank below the surface. As 
the other dogs approached, the coon manoeuvred 
so that the struggling body was always between 
himself and his attackers. Never for an instant 
did he allow his prisoner's head to come to the sur- 
face. Suddenlv he released it, and flashed back 
into the shadows. The body of the great hound 
floated on the surface, with gaping jaws and unseeing 
eyes. 

Once more the coon dived and dragged down, 
with the same deadly grip, the smaller of his remain- 
ing opponents. This time he went under water with 
him. The dog struggled desperately, but paws have 
no chance against hands. Moreover, a raccoon can 
stay under water nearly five minutes, which is over 
a minute too long for any dog. When the coon at 
last appeared on the surface, he came up alone. 

At that moment old Sam, aroused by the barking 
and baying of his dogs, hurried to the bank and called 
off his remaining hound, who was only too glad to 
swim awav from the death in the dark, which had 
overtaken his pack mates. A moment later the victor 
was on his way back to the den-tree. The next morn- 
ing, in a little inlet, where an eddy of the stream had 
cast them, Sam found the bodies of the dogs who had 
dared to give a raccoon the odds of the stream ; and he 
swore to himself to kill that coon before snow flew. 



i ■ 



THE CLEANLYS 17 

Many and many a time he tried. Everywhere 
the old Piny saw the tracks of the family, the front 
paws showing claw-marks, while the hind paws, set 
flat like those of a bear, made a print like a baby's 
bare foot. One track always showed three claws 
missing. Yet, hunt as he would, he could never sur- 
prise any of them again by day or night, while the 
many traps he sowed everywhere caught nothing. 

One September night summer passed on, and the 
next morning there was the tang of frost in the air. 
The leaves of the sour-gum, the first tree to turn, 
showed blood-red. Day by day the woods gleamed, 
as the frost-fire leaped from tree to tree. The blue- 
berry bushes ran in waves of wine along the ground, 
the sassafras was all sunshine-yellow, the white oaks 
old-gold, while the poison-ivy flaunted the regal red 
and yellow of Spain. 

Before long, the Hunter's Moon of October was in 
the sky ; and the night it was full, assembled the first 
coon-hunt of the season. Sam Carpenter was there, 
and Mose Butler came with his Grip, while Charlie 
Rogers brought Pet — famous coon dogs, which had 
never been known to run on a false scent. Came 
also old Hen Pine, with his famous gun. It had 
a barrel only about a foot long, for once, while 
hunting, the old man had slipped into a bog, plug- 
ging the muzzle of his gun with mud. The result 
was that the next time Hen fired it off, half the barrel 
disappeared. He claimed, however, that, barrel or 
no barrel, it was the best gun in the country, bar none. 
Anyway, a gun was only needed to frighten a treed 



18 WILD FOLK 

coon into coming down, since the etiquette of a coon- 
hunt is the same as that of a fox-hunt — only the 
dogs must do the killing. 

It was just before midnight when the party 
reached the dense woods where Sam Carpenter had 
so often seen the tracks of the Cleanlys. Early in 
the evening the little family had found a persimmon 
tree loaded down with sweet, puckery, orange-red 
fruit, and were ambling peacefully toward one of 
their father's limiting -lodges in an old crow's nest. 
They happened to pass the neck of woods nearest 
Sam's cabin just as the whole party entered it. 
Lanterns waved, men shouted, and dogs yipped and 
bayed among the trees, as they ran sniffing here and 
there, trying to locate a fresh trail. 

The fierce chorus came to the limited ones like a 
message of death and doom. If they scattered. 
some of the little coons would inevitably be overtaken 
by this pack of trained dogs, directed by veteran 
hunters. If they kept together, sooner or later they 
would be treed, and perhaps all perish. Once again 
the leader faced the last desperate duty of the father 
of a raccoon family. He dropped back to meet and 
hold the ranging pack until Mother Coon could 
hurry the little ones home by the tree-top route. 

In another minute Xip. the last remaining dog of 
Sam's pack, caught the scent, and with a bay that 
echoed through the tangled thickets and across the 
dark pools of the marshland woods, dashed along the 
fresh trail. Then happened something which had 
never before befallen the luckless Xip in all his days 



THE CLEANLYS 19 

and nights of hunting. From out of the thickets 
toward which the trail led rushed a black-masked 
figure, hardly to be seen in the gloom. Nip's 
triumphant bay changed to a dismayed yelp, as a set 
of sharp claws dug bloody furrows down his face and 
ripped his long silky ears to ribbons. 

Before he could come to close grips his opponent 
had disappeared into the depths of a thicket, and 
Nip decided to wait for the rest of the pack. In a 
moment they joined him, with Grip and Pet leading. 
As they approached the thicket they, too, had the 
surprise of their lives. Contrary to all precedent a 
hunted coon, instead of running away, attacked them 
furiously. It was very irregular and disconcerting. 
Even as they were disentangling themselves from 
the clinging greenbrier and matted branches, they 
were gashed and slashed by an enemy who flashed in 
and out from the bit of open ground where he had 
waited for them. The leaders of the pack yelped 
and howled, and stopped, until reinforced and 
pressed forward by the slower dogs as they came up. 

Little by little the old raccoon was forced back 
and compelled to make desperate dashes here and 
there, to avoid being surrounded. At last, he found 
himself driven beyond the area of the tangled thickets 
and into a stretch of open ground. Spreading out, 
the dogs hemmed him in on every side except one. 
Guarded on his flank by a long swale of the spiked 
greenbrier, he rushed along the one line left open to 
him, only to find himself in the open again. Just 
beyond him the cranberry growers had left a great 



20 WILD FOLK 

sweet-gum tree which, with the lapse of years, had 
grown to an enormous size. As the pack closed 
around him, the coon made a dash for his refuge and 
scuttled up the trunk, while the dogs leaped high 
in the air, snapping at his very heels. 

By the time the hunters came up,, the whole clamor- 
ing pack, in a circle, was pawing at the tree. When 
the men saw that Pet and Grip and Nip, whose 
noses had never yet betrayed them, had their paws 
against the trunk with the rest, they decided that the 
coon had been treed, and was still treed, which did 
not always follow. The vast tree was too large 
around either to climb or to cut. Raising the lighted 
lantern which he carried, old Hen held it back of his 
head and stared straight up into the heart of the 
great gum. At last, sixty feet above the ground, 
against the blackness of the trunk showed two dots 
of flaming gold. They were the eyes of the raccoon, 
as it leaned out to stare down at the vellow blotch of 
light below. 

Posting the dogs in a wide circle around the tree, 
the men built up a roaring fire and sat down to wait 
for the coming dawn. For long they talked and 
smoked and dozed over the fire, until at last a ghostly 
whiteness seemed to rise from the ground. Little 
by little the shadows paled, and the spectral 
tree-trunks showed more distinctly against the 
brightening sky. while crimson bars gleamed across 
the gateway of the east. 

At the shouts of the men and the yelps and barks 
of the dogs below, the old coon stiffened and stared 



THE CLEANLYS 21 

down at them unflinchingly. Hen Pine produced 
his cherished weapon. Aiming carefully above the 
treed animal he fired, and the heavy load splashed 
and crashed through the upper branches of the tree. 
Grimly the great raccoon faced his fate, as the 
scattering shot warned him that his only chance for 
life was on the ground. Slowly but unhesitatingly 
he moved down the side of the tree, while the dogs 
below bayed and howled and leaped high in the air. 
Beyond the dogs stood the men. In their faces 
showed no pity for the trapped animal, who must 
fight for his life against such fearful odds. 

For a moment the coon looked down impassively 
at his foes. Then, just as the golden rim of the 
rising sun showed above the tree-tops, he turned 
like lightning and sprang out into mid-air, sideways, 
so that he would land close to the trunk of the tree. 
As he came through the air, spread out like a huge 
flying squirrel, his keen claws slashed back and forth 
as if he were limbering up for action. He struck 
the ground lightly and was met by a wave of dogs 
which swept him against the tree. There with his 
back guarded by the trunk he made his last stand. 

At first, it seemed as if he would be overwhelmed 
as the howling pack dashed at him, but it was science 
against numbers. Perfectly balanced, he ducked 
and sidestepped like a lightweight champion in a 
street-fight, slashing with his long, keen claws so 
swiftly that not one of the worrying, crowded pack 
escaped. With flashing, tiny, imperceptible move- 
ments he avoided time and again the snaps and rushes 



22 WILD FOLK 

of the best hounds there. Occasionally he would be 
slashed by their sharp teeth, and his grizzled coat 
was flecked here and there with blood; but it was 
difficult to secure a firm grip on his tough loose hide, 
and none of the hounds were able to secure the fatal 
throat-hold, or to clamp their jaws on one of those 
slender flashing paws. 

For the most part, the old champion depended 
upon his long claws, which ripped bloody furrows 
every time they got home. Only in the clinches, 
when held for a moment by one or more of his op- 
ponents, did he use the forty fighting teeth with 
which he was equipped. When this happened, the 
dog who exchanged bites with him invariably got the 
worst of the bargain. The fighting was as fast as 
it was furious. In less than a minute two or three 
of the pack limped out of the circle with dreadful 
gashed throats or crunched and shattered paws. 
Then nothing could be seen but a many-colored mass, 
with the gray and black always on top. Suddenly 
it broke, and the great raccoon, torn and bleeding, 
but with an air of grim confidence, was alone with his 
back against the tree, while around him in an ever- 
widening circle the hounds backed away, yelping 
with pain. 

The raccoon recovered his wind and, wily fighter 
that he was, changed his tactics. Without giving 
the dogs time to get back their lost courage, he sud- 
denly dashed forward with a grating, terrifying 
snarl, the first sound that had come from him 
throughout the battle. As he rushed at them, his 



THE CLEANLYS 23 

hair bristled until he seemed to swell to double his 
size. 

For a second the ring held. Then with a yelp the 
nearest dog dived out of the way and scuttled off. 
His example was too much for the others. A second 
more, and the ring was broken and the dogs scattered. 
In vain the men tried to rally them again. They 
had resolved to have no further part or lot with that 
coon, who, without a backward look, moved stiffly 
and limpingly toward the nearest thicket. 

Not until he had plunged into a tangle of green- 
brier, where no dog could follow, did that pack re- 
cover its morale. Then indeed, safe outside the 
fierce thorns, they growled and barked and raved and 
told of the terrible things they would do to that 
coon — when they caught him. 

Half an hour later, and half a league farther, 
from a great gum tree on the edge of a black silent 
stream, came the sound of soft, welcoming love- 
notes. 

Father Coon was home again. 



II 

BLACKBEAK 

It was the high-water slack of summer. Up on 
Seven Mountains the woods were waves of deep 
lush green; and in the hot September sunshine the 
birds sang again, now that the moulting-moon of 
August had set. Yet there was an expectancy in 
the soft air. Shrill, sweet insect-notes, unheard 
before, multiplied. When the trees and the grass 
were all dappled with patches of dark and moonshine, 
the still air throbbed with the pulsing notes of the 
white tree-crickets: while above their range the high 
lilt of their black brethren thrilled without a pause, 
the unnoticed background of all other night-notes. 
From the bushes, which dripped moonlight in the 
clearings, a harsh voice occasionallv said, solemnly, 
' Katv did! '' A week later, all the open spaces on 
the fringe of the woods would be strident with the 
clicking choruses of the main host of the filmy green. 
long-winged insects, of which these stragglers were 
but the advance-guard. 

One morning, from the emerald-green of a swamp 
maple, a single branch flamed out a crimson-red. 
The ebb of the year had begun. As the days 
shortened, imperceptibly the air became golden, and 
tasted of frost. Then through the lengthening 
nights the frost-fires began to blaze. The swamp 

24 



BLACKBEAR 25 

maples deepened to a copper-red and ended a yolk- 
yellow. On the uplands, the sugar maples were all 
peach-red and yellow-ochre, and the antlers of the 
staghorn sumac were badged with old-gold and 
dragon's-blood red. The towering white ashes were 
vinous-purple, with an overlying bloom of slaty- 
violet, shading to a bronze-yellow. The scented 
trefoil leaves of the sassafras were all buttercup - 
yellow and peach-red, and the sturdy oaks were burnt- 
umber. 

Richest of all were the robes of the red oaks. 
They were dyed a dull carmine-lake, while the narrow 
leaves of the beeches drifted down in sheaves of 
gamboge-yellow arrow-heads. Closer to the ground 
was the arrow-wood, whose straight branches the 
Indians used for arrow-shafts before the days of 
gunpowder. Its serrated leaves were a dull garnet. 
Lower still, the fleshy leaves of the pokeberry were 
all carmine-purple above and Tyrian rose beneath. 
Everywhere were the fragrant Indian-yellow leaves 
of the spice-bush, sweeter than any incense of man's 
making; while its berries, which cure fevers, were a 
dark, glossy red, quite different from the coral-red 
and orange berries of the bittersweet, with its straw- 
yellow leaves. The fierce barbed cat-brier showed 
leaves varying from a morocco-red to the lightest 
shade of yolk-yellow, at times attaining to pure 
scarlet, the only leaf of the forest so honored. 

Through this riot of color, and along a web of dim 
trails, a great animal passed swiftly and soundlessly, 
dull black in color, save for a brownish muzzle and a 



26 WILD FOLK 

white diamond-shaped patch in the centre of its vast 
chest. This color, the humped hind quarters, and the 
head swinging low on a long neck could belong to 
none other than the blackbear, the last survivor of 
the three great carnivora of our Eastern forests. 
It moved with a misleading loose- jointed gait, which 
seemed slow. Yet no man can keep ahead of a bear, 
as many a hunter has found to his cost. 

Not so wise as the wolf, nor so fierce as the panther, 
the blackbear has outlived them both. " When in 
doubt, run! 3 ' is his motto; and, like Descartes, the 
wise blackbear founds his life on the doctrine of 
doubt. As for the unwise — they are dead. To be 
sure, even this saving rule of conduct would not keep 
him alive in these days of repeating rifles, were it 
not for his natural abilities. A bear can hear a 
hunter a quarter of a mile away, and scent one for 
over a mile if the wind be right. He may weigh 
three hundred pounds and be over two feet wide, 
yet he will slip like a shadow through tangled under- 
bush, and feed all day safely in a berry-patch, with 
half a dozen hunters peering and hiding and lurking 
and looking for him. 

To-day, as this particular bear faced the wind, it 
was evident from her smaller size and more pointed 
head that she was of the attractive sex. Her face 
was neither concave, like the grizzly bear, nor convex, 
like the polar bear, but showed almost straight lines; 
and as she stood there, black against the glowing 
background of the changing leaves, her legs, with 
their flat-set feet, seemed comically like the booted 



BLACKBEAR 27 

legs of some short fat man. The only part of the 
flaming color-scheme which appealed to her was that 
which she could eat. Purple plums of the sweet- 
viburnum, wild black bitter cherries, thick-skinned 
fox-grapes, shriveled rasping frost-grapes, huckle- 
berries with their six crackling seeds, blueberries 
whose seeds are too small to be noticed — Mrs. Bear 
raked off quarts and gallons and barrels of them all 
with her great claws, yet never swallowed a green or 
imperfect one among the number. The fact that 
the bear is one of the Seven Sleepers accounted for 
the appetite of this one. Although the blackbear 
wears a fur coat four inches thick, and a waistcoat 
of fat of the same thickness, it has found that rent is 
cheaper than board, and spends the winter under- 
ground, living on the fat which it has stored up 
during the fall. Some of the Sleepers, like the chip- 
munk, take a light lunch to bed with them, in case they 
may be hungry during the long night, and fill 
a little storehouse before they turn in for their long 
winter nap. The bear and the woodchuck, however, 
prefer to act the part of the storehouse personally; 
all of which accounted for the appetite of this bear 
through the crisp fall days. Ordinarily a creature 
of the twilight and the early dawn, yet now she 
hunted through the broad daylight and far into the 
night, and devoured with the utmost enthusiasm 
food of all kinds by the hundredweight. Some of 
the selections on her menu-card would have been 
impossible to any other animal than the leather-lined 
blackbear, the champion animal sword-swallower. 



_- ~IUD FOLK 



One warz. September mo: 
day with a gallon of berries which about 
the blueberry-patch where she had been feeding. 
Thereupon she started to wander alec;: if: ±fieez- 
mile range, in seaeh for stronger :■:•:•! M-e frzzii 
it. In a damp part of the woo is sze azg ~zz 
swallowed without ffinchzig. many a 
flat bulbs of tiie wz: arm :: Jaz 
The juice of these roetf :-:ziazis a multitude ::' keez 
microscopic crystal, wzizz iffer: a zzz.ii :::r-: 
like a zzxture of sulphuric acid and pondered glass: 
nor does water assuage the pain in the If : r. 5-e 7 : 1 : 
the Jacks-in-the-pulpits grew chmiT 1 : 1 zbe broad. 
juicy. ill-smelling leases : : :ie *V:-"r- ; s '-; : ge — 
bears the first flower :: lie 7117 i-Ii* Bei: aie 
these greedily, although the tz__ 7 ~ : ir:i :: zr.e_: :::- 
roding juice will blister the mouth ::' a: 17 zzzzzz 

Beyond the skunk-cabbage pat:'z :z a Izz: ::' a 
shadbush, she discovered a gray cone somewhat 
larger than a Rugfey fir-ball, zia.de : :' mi" layer* 
of pulpy wood-fibre paper Iz azi 11: :: zz 
rpezizg :i lie zziil'f: eii "izziei rzbezly 1 1 : :• /fu- 
sion ci grt a* za 7-f ae*e 1 _ . 1 ■ . 1 : - ~ 
Xo insect :s trea:ea "^zth more ref/pe: - : 
folk than the hornet. H : : ; f : 
hare been kfllei :y enrage i r 
single-action bee wiosr bar lei 1 
once. the hornet is a rezeaie: I: 
as early and as often as ninnirfi 
12 most liberal in b e$tnz.a:e 
sting is as painful as a bulk: :r: 



-> r 



BLACKBEAR 29 

revolver. Yet the bear approached the nest without 
any hesitation and, rearing up on her hind quarters, 
with one scoop of her paw brought the oval to the 
ground and was instantly enshrouded in a furious, 
buzzing, stinging cloud. Unmoved by their attacks, 
the imperturbable animal proceeded to gobble down 
both the nest and its contents, licking up grubs, half- 
grown hornets, and full-armed fighters alike, with her 
long flexible tongue, and swallowing great masses of 
the gray soft paper. When at last only a few 
scattered survivors were left, she lumbered off and 
followed a path which, like all bear-trails, led at last 
to one of the dry, pleasant, wind-swept hillsides that 
the bear-people love so well. There she spent a 
happy hour before a vast ant-hill erected by fierce 
red-and-black soldier ants. Sinking first one fore- 
paw and then the other deep into the loose earth, she 
would draw them out covered with swarming, biting 
ants, which she carefully licked off, evidently relish- 
ing their stinging, sour taste. 

Thereafter, filled full of berries, bulbs, skunk- 
cabbage, hornets, and ants, Mrs. Bear decided to call 
it a day, and curled herself up to sleep under the 
roots of a fallen pine. 

Another day she discovered groves of oak trees 
loaded down with acorns. Better than any botanist 
she knew which were sweetest; and for a week she 
ate acorns from the white oaks, the tips of whose 
leaves are rounded, and the chestnut-oaks, whose 
leaves are serrated like those of the chestnut tree. 
Then came a morning when, from a far-away valley, 



30 WILD FOLK 

floated a sound which sent her hurrying down from 
her tree, although it was only the bell-like note of 
the flappy-eared hound which belonged to Rashe 
Weeden, the trapper, who lived in the Hollow. Yet 
the bear knew that a hound meant a hunter, and that 
a hunter meant death. Only a straightaway run 
for miles and hours could save her, if the hound were 
on her trail. Weeks of feasting had left her in no 
condition for any such Marathon work. 

Yet somewhere, during the hard-earned years of 
her long life, she had learned another answer to this 
attack of the trailing hound. Down the mountain- 
side, straight toward the approaching dog she 
hurried, following a deeply marked path. It led 
directly under the overhanging branch of a great 
red oak. She followed it bevond the tree, and then 
doubled and, directly under the limb, circled and 
confused the trail. Then, still following her back 
track, she passed the tree and, returning to it by a 
long detour, climbed it from the farther side, and in 
a moment was hidden among the leaves. Xearer 
and nearer came the tuneful note of the hunting 
dog who had betraved so manv and manv of the 
wood-folk to their death. Suddenly, as he caught the 
fresh scent, his voice went up half an octave, and he 
rushed along the faint path until he reached the red- 
oak tree. There he paused to puzzle out the tangled 
trail. As he sniffed back and forth under the over- 
hanging limb, there was a tiny rustle in the leaves 
above him, hardly as loud as a squirrel would make. 
Then a black mass shot down like a pile-driver, a sheer 



BLACKBEAR 



31 



twenty feet. The hound never knew what struck 
him, and it was not until an hour later that Rashe 
Weeden found his flattened carcass, 

" Looked as if he'd been stepped on by one of them 
circus elephants," he confided afterwards to old Fred 
Dean, who lived over on the Barrack, near him. 

" Elephants be mighty scurce on Seven Moun- 
tains," objected the old man; and the passing of that 
hound remains a mystery on the Barrack to this day. 

One bitter gray afternoon, when the flaming leaves 
had died down to dull browns and ochres, word came 
to the wild folk that winter was on its way to Seven 
Mountains. Little flurries of stinging snow whirled 
through the air, and the wind shrieked across the 
marshland where the bear was still hunting for food. 
As the long grass of the tussocks streamed out like 
tow-colored hair, she shambled deep into the nearest 
wood, until behind the massed tree-trunks she was 
safe from the fierce fingers of the north wind, which 
howled like a wolf overhead. From that day she 
stopped the search for food and started house-hunt- 
ing. Back and forth, up and down the mountains, 
in and out of the swamps, across the uplands and 
along the edges of the hills, she hurried for days at a 
time. 

At last, on a dry slope, she found what she wanted. 
Deep in the withered grass showed a vast chestnut 
stump. Starting above this on the slope, in the very 
centre of a tangled thicket she dug a slanting tunnel. 
The entrance was narrow, like the neck of a jug, and 
was so small that it did not seem possible that the 



32 WILD FOLK 

bear could ever push her huge shoulders through. 
When it reached the stump, however, it widened out 
into an oval chamber partly walled in by buttressed 
roots. Against the slope she dug a wide flat shelf, 
which she covered deep with dry leaves and soft grass. 
and sank beside the stump a small air-hole, which led 
into the lower end of the burrow. With the same 
skill with which she had picked and sorted berries, 
with her huge paws she removed every trace of the 
fresh earth displaced by her digging. Then she piled 
loose brush neatlv around the entrance to the burrow, 
and crawled in. Turning around at the foot of the 
tunnel, she crept back head-first and. reaching out 
her paw, carefullv corked the iug with the brush 
which she dragged deep over the opening. Then, six 
feet underground, on her drv warm bed. she curled 
up for a four months* nap. 

As the winter davs set in. the driving snow drifted 
deep against the stump, until even the thicket above 
it was hidden. Then came the bitter cold. There 
were long days and nights when there was not a 
breath of wind,, and the mercury went down below all 
readings in the settlements. In the forests and on the 
mountains great boulders burst apart, and in places 
the frozen ground split open in narrow cracks a hun- 
dred feet long. Life was a bitter, losing right against 
cold and hunger for many of the wood-dwellers : but. 
six feet underground, the bear slept safe, at truce 
with both of these ancient foes of the wild folk, while 
the warm vapor of her breath, freezing, sealed the 
sides of her cell with solid ice. Xot until spring un- 



BLACKBEAR 33 

locked the door, would she leave that little room 
again. 

Yet, in January, although the door was still locked 
by the snow and barred by the ice, two tiny bearlings 
found their way in. They were blind and bare, and 
both of them could have been held at once on the palm 
of a man's hand. Yet Mrs. Bear was convinced that 
there had never been such a beautiful and talented 
pair. She licked their pink little bodies and nursed 
them and cuddled them, and the long freezing months 
were all too short to show the full measure of her 
mother-love. As the weeks went by, they became 
bigger and bigger. When they were hungry, which 
was most of the time, they whimpered and nuzzled 
like little puppies, and pushed and hurried and 
crowded, lest they might starve to death before they 
could reach those fountains of warm milk which 
flowed so unfailingly for them. When they were 
both full-fed, Mother Bear would arch her vast bulk 
over them, and they would sleep through the long 
dreamy, happy hours, wrapped up warm in her soft 
fur. 

Then, one day — the fortieth after their arrival — 
a great event occurred. Both the cubs opened their 
eyes. There was not much to see, but the old bear 
licked them ecstatically, much impressed by this new 
proof of their genius. From that time on, they grew 
apace, and every day waxed stronger and friskier. 
Sometimes they would stand up and box like fly- 
weight champions, and clinch and wrestle and tumble 
around and over the old bear, until she would sweep 



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BLACKBEAR 35 

It seemed to them thin, cold, unstable stuff compared 
with what they had been drinking. Their birthplace 
once abandoned, they never returned to it. There- 
after they slept wherever and whenever the old bear 
was sleepy, cuddled in her vast arms and against her 
warm fur. 

That day, as they turned away from the brook, 
Mother Bear stopped and stared long at the larger 
of her two cubs. Unlike the dull black of his smaller 
sister, he was a rich cinnamon-brown in color. In 
years past there had been a red cub in her family, and 
once even a short-lived straw-yellow youngster; but 
this was her first experience with a brownie, and the 
old bear grunted doubtfully as she led the way up 
the mountainside. 

At last and at last came the golden month of the 
wild folk — honey-sweet May, when the birds come 
back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of 
the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year. 
The woods were white with the long snowy petals of 
the shad-blow, and purple with amethyst masses of 
rhodora, when the old bear began the education of 
her cubs. Safety, Food, More Food comprised the 
courses in her curriculum. Less and less often did 
she nurse them, as she taught them to find a variety of 
pleasant foods. Because Mother Bear knew that 
disobedience was death, she was a stern disciplinarian. 
On their very first walk, Blackie, the littlest of the 
family, found it difficult to keep up with the old 
bear's swinging gait. Little bears that fall behind 
often disappear. Accordingly, when Blackie finally 



36 WILD FOLK 

caught up, she received a cuff which, although it 
made her bawl, taught her not to lag. 

Brownie erred in the opposite direction. Big and 
strong and confident., he once pushed ahead of his 
mother, along a trail that led up a mountain-gorge 
where the soft deep mosses held the water like Green 
sponges. Suddenly, just as he was about to put his 
small paw into a great bear-print in the moss, he re- 
ceived a left-hand swing which sent him spinning off 
the trail into a tree-trunk, with the breath knocked 
clear out of his small body. Then the old bear showed 
him what may happen to cubs who think they know 
more than their mothers. From deep under the moss, 
she had caught a whiff of the death-scent of man. 
Reaching out beyond the trail, she raised without an 
effort, on a derrick-like forepaw. a section of a dead 
tree-trunk, a foot in diameter, and sent it squattering 
down full upon the paw-print. As the end of the log 
sank in the moss, there was a fierce snap, and a series 
of sharp and dreadful steel teeth clamped deep into 
the decayed wood. Rashe Weeden. the trapper, who 
trapped bears at all seasons of the year, had dug up 
a section of moss containing the bear-imprint, and 
underneath it had set a hellish double-spring bear- 
trap. Let man or beast step ever so lightly on the 
print which rested on the broad pan of the trap, and 
two stiff springs were released. Once locked in the 
living flesh, the teeth would cut through muscle and 
sinew, and crush the bones of anything living., while 
the double-spring held them locked. A vast clog 
chained to the trap kept the tortured animal from 



BLACKBEAR 37 

going far, and a week later the victim would welcome 
the coming of the trapper and the swift death he 
brought. 

A few days later the little family saw an object 
lesson of what humans do to bears, and what such a 
trap meant to them. They were following one of the 
bear-paths which always lead sooner or later to hill- 
sides where there are berries and a view and no flies. 
Suddenly the wind brought to the ears of the old bear 
the sound of sobbing. She stopped and winnowed 
the air carefully through her sensitive nose. There 
was the scent of bear, but no taint of man in the 
breeze, and she followed the trail toward where the 
strange noises came from, around a bend in the path. 
More and more slowly, and with every caution, she 
moved forward, while her two cubs kept close behind 
like little shadows. As the path opened into a little 
natural clearing, all three of them saw a horrifying 
sight. There in front of them lay another smaller, 
younger mother-bear. The cruel fanged jaws of a 
trap were sunk deep into her shattered left fore- 
shoulder, while the clog was caught under a stump. 
The prisoned animal had tugged and dragged and 
pulled, evidently for long days and nights, as the 
ground was torn up for yards and yards around her. 
At last, worn out by exhaustion and the unceasing, 
fretting, festering pain of the gripping jaws, the cap- 
tive had sunk down hopelessly to the ground, and 
from time to time cried out with a shuddering sob- 
bing note. Her glazed, beseeching eyes had a bewil- 
dered look, as if she wondered why this horror had 



38 WILD FOLK 

come to her. At her knees a little cub stood, and 
whimpered like a sorrowful baby and then raised his 
little paws trustingly against the huge bulk of his 
mother, who could help him no more. Another cub 
had climbed into a little tree overhead, and looked 
down in wonder at the sorrowful sight below. 

The old bear took one long look while her cubs, 
terrified, crowded close up against her. Then she 
turned, and plunged into the depths of the nearest 
thicket. There was nothing to be done for the 
trapped one, and she knew that, soon or late, death 
would stalk along the trail which she had just left. 
Later that afternoon, when they were miles from the 
place, the old bear's keen ear heard two distant shots 
from far away across the mountain-ridges. As the 
twilight deepened, she led her little family out in a 
search for food. All at once there came from below 
them a strange little distress-note, which made 
Mother Bear stop and look anxiously around to see 
if both of her cubs were safe. Again it sounded, much 
nearer, and then from among the trees a small dark 
animal hurried toward them. It was one of the cubs 
they had seen earlier in the afternoon, escaped 
from the death which had overtaken the others, 
running wailing and lonely through the darkening 
woods, looking for its lost mother. At the sight of 
Mother Bear, it gave a little whicker of relief and 
delight, and ran straight to her and nuzzled hungrily 
under her warm fur, quite as if it had a right to be 
there. Although the old bear growled a little at 
first, she was not proof against the entreating whines 



BLACKBEAR 39 

of the little newcomer. As for her own cubs, after 
carefully sniffing this new sister over and finding her 
blacker even than Blackie, with a funny white spot 
near the end of her small nose, they decided to rec- 
ognize her as part of the family. In another minute 
Spotty was feeding beside Blackie, and from that 
day forward the old bear was trailed by three cubs 
instead of two. 

As summer approached, Mother Bear weaned her 
family and showed them how to get their living from 
the land, as she did. She taught them all about 
ants' nests and grubs, and showed them a score or 
so of sweet and succulent roots. Only the root of 
the water-hemlock, with its swollen, purple-streaked 
stem which tastes so sweet and is so deadly, she taught 
them to avoid, as well as those fierce and fatal sisters 
among the mushrooms, the death-angel and the fly- 
mushroom, whose stems grow out of a socket, the 
danger-signal of their family. 

Teaching the cubs to enjoy yellow- jackets' nests, 
one of the delicacies on bear-menus, was a more 
difficult affair. At first, Blackie and Spotty, after 
being stung on their soft little noses, would have no 
further traffic with any such red-hot dainties. 
Brownie was made of sterner stuff. After he had 
once learned how good yellow- jacket grubs were, he 
hunted everywhere for the nests. When he found 
one, he would dig it out, while the yellow- jackets 
stung his nose until the pain became unendurable. 
Then he would sit up and rub the end of it with both 
paws and bawl with all his might, only to start dig- 



40 WILD FOLK 

ging again when the smart became bearable. Some- 
times he would have to stop and squeal frantically 
three or four times, to relieve his feelings — but he 
always finished the very last grub. 

When the weather grew warmer, the old bear took 
all the cubs down to the edge of a hidden mountain- 
lake, and there taught them, one by one, to swim, 
hiding the others safely on the bank. At first, 
Mother Bear would allow each little swimmer to grip 
the end of her five-inch tail, and be towed through the 
water. As soon, however, as they learned the stroke, 
they had to paddle for themselves. One warm 
afternoon lazy Brownie swam with her to the middle 
of the lake, and then tried to get a tow back, only to 
receive a cuff that sent him two feet under water. 
When he came to the surface again, he swam beside 
his mother as bravely as if he had been born an otter 
and not a bear-cub. 

When they were still a long distance from the 
shore, the old bear raised her big black head out of 
the water and stared over toward a little bay half 
a mile away. Her keen nostrils had caught the scent 
of man across the still waters. Then, to his surprise, 
Brownie was again given the privilege of a tow, and 
found himself whirling shoreward at a tremendous 
rate. From the far-away inlet a lean, lithe canoe 
flashed toward them as fast as Steve O'Donnell, the 
lumberjack, could paddle. Steve had come over to 
the lake to estimate on some lumber, and had seen 
the swimming bears. Hurriedly pitching into the 
canoe the long, light, almost straight-handled axe, 



BLACKBEAR 41 

which was the article of faith of all the woodcutters 
of that region, he started out to overtake the 
fugitives. 

Steve was not learned in bear- ways, or he would 
never have started in a canoe after a swimming bear, 
without a rifle. As he came nearer and nearer, and 
it became evident to the old bear that she would be 
overtaken before she could reach shore, she turned 
and swam unhesitatingly toward the canoe, while 
Brownie made the best of his way ashore. Steve 
dropped his paddle and seized his axe, and when the 
great head was close beside his craft, struck at it with 
all his strength. He had yet to learn that the bear 
is an unsurpassed boxer, and that few men are able 
to land a blow on one, even when swimming. As 
his axe whizzed downward, it was suddenly deflected 
by a left turn, given with such force that the axe was 
torn from the man's hands and disappeared in the 
deep water. The next instant both the bear's paws 
clutched the gunwale of the canoe, and a second later 
Steve was swimming for his life in the cold water. 
Mrs. Bear paid no further attention to him, but 
started again for the nearest shore. Overtaking 
Brownie, she gave him another tow, and by the time 
Steve, chilled to the bone, reached the farther shore, 
the whole bear family was miles away. 

By midsummer the cubs were half -grown, although 
they looked mostly legs. One summer twilight a 
strange thing happened. The family had reached 
one of their safe and pleasant hillsides, when there 
loomed up before them a vast black figure among 



42 WILD FOLK 

the trees, and out into the open strode a blackbear of 
a size that none of the three little cubs had ever seen 
before. In their wanderings they had met many 
other bears. Most of these the old bear passed un- 
seeingly, in accordance with bear etiquette. Some- 
times, if the stranger came too close, the hair on 
Mother Bear's back would begin to bristle, and a 
deep, threatening rumble, that seemed to come from 
underground, would warn against any nearer 
approach. 

To-night, however, when this newcomer lumbered 
up to the cubs, who shrank behind their mother, 
Mother Bear made no protest. He sniffed at them 
thoughtfully, and then said loudly, " Koff — koff — 
koff — koff." Mother Bear seemed entirely satis- 
fied with this sentiment, and from that time on the 
stranger led the little band, and the cubs came to 
know that he was none other than Father Bear. 
Bears mate only every other year; but often a couple 
will join forces in the odd year, and wander together 
as a family until winter. 

Father Bear was a giant among his kind. He 
would tip the scales at perhaps five hundred pounds, 
and stood over three feet high at his foreshoulders, 
and was between six and seven feet long. In all 
the emergencies and crises of everyday life, he showed 
himself always a very present help in every time of 
trouble. Warier and wiser even than Mother Bear, 
he piloted his little family into the wildest and lone- 
liest corners of all that wild and lonely land. Not 
for many years had the old giant met his match. 



BLACKBEAR 43 

Of panther, Canada lynx, porcupine, wolf, wolver- 
ine, and all the bears, black and brown, for a hundred 
miles around, he was the acknowledged overlord. 
This sense of power gave him a certain grim confi- 
dence, and he hunted and foraged for his family, 
with none to hinder save only man, the king of beasts. 
Crafty as he was powerful, the old bear fled into 
his most inaccessible fastnesses at the slightest taint 
or trace of that death-bringer. 

One curious custom he had. Whenever he ap- 
proached certain trees in his usual fifteen-mile range, 
he would examine them with great care for several 
minutes. These trees always stood in a prominent 
place, and were deeply scarred and furrowed with 
tooth-marks and claw-marks. Father Bear, after 
looking them all over carefully, would sniff every 
recent mark gravely. With his head on one side, 
he seemed to be receiving and considering messages 
from unseen senders. Occasionally the news that the 
tree brought seemed to enrage him profoundly. 
Thereupon he would claw and chew the unoffending 
tree frothingly, and then trot away growling deep 
in his throat. At other times, he would raise his ears 
politely, as if recognizing a friend ; or wrinkle his nose 
doubtfully but courteously, as a well-bred bear might 
do who met a stranger. Always, however, before 
leaving, he would stand up on his hind quarters and 
claw the tree as high as he could reach, at the same 
time drawing his teeth across it at right angles to 
the vertical claw-marks. The cubs soon learned 
that these lone, marked trees were bear-postoffices 



44 WILD FOLK 

and that it was the duty of every he-bear of any real 
bearhood to leave a message there, with tooth and 
claw, for friend and foe to read. 

When September came again, the family found 
themselves ranging far to the north, in a country 
which the cubs had never seen before. There they 
saw in the soft moss the deep marks of great splay 
hoofs; while here and there the bark of the striped 
maple was torn off in long strips seven or eight feet 
from the ground, and always on only one side, so that 
the half -peeled tree never died, as did the girdled 
trees attacked by the porcupine. One of the slow 
migrations of the moose-folk, which take place only 
at intervals of many years, had set in. Drifting 
down from the Far North, scattered herds had in- 
vaded the old bear's northernmost range. Like the 
witch-hazel, which blooms last of all the shrubs, the 
love-moon of the moose rises in the fall. The males 
of that folk take hardly the stress and strain of court- 
ship. Bad-tempered at the best, a bull-moose is a 
devil unchained in September. As the hunter's 
moon waxes in the frosty sky, he neither rests, eats, 
nor sleeps, but wanders night and day through the 
woods in search of a mate. Woe be to man or beast 
who meets him then! 

As the afterglow died out at the end of one of the 
shortening September days, the bear family heard 
faintly from a far-away hillside a short bellowing 
' Oh-ah! oh-ah! oh-ah! ' : Suddenly, not two hundred 
yards away, on a hardwood ridge, came back a long 
ringing, mooing call, which sounded like " Who-are- 




PQ 

u 

PQ 
Q 

c« 
O 
O 



h-3 

P 
PQ 



BLACKBEAR 45 

you! who-are-you ! ' It was the answer of the 
cow-moose to her distant would-be lover. At 
the sound, the ears of the great bear pricked 
up, and his deep -set, little eyes twinkled fiercely 
in the fading light. Without a sound, he shambled 
swiftly into the swamp toward the call. Hesitating 
for a moment, Mother Bear followed him, and 
close behind her trailed the usual procession. 
The frost in the air and the call, vibrant and pulsing 
with warm life, had made the old bear hungry for 
fresh meat. Unfortunately for him, as he ap- 
proached the little ridge, a tiny breeze sprang up. 
As the sensitive nostrils of the young cow-moose 
caught the scent of danger, she drifted away into the 
woods like a shadow, and was gone. 

When the bear reached the ridge, he could not be 
convinced that she had escaped. Everywhere lin- 
gered the warm delicious scent, so fresh that his 
great jaws dripped as he glided silently and swiftly 
through the thickets. Then, as he hunted, suddenly, 
silently, a vast bulk heaved into view, looming high 
and huge and black above the saplings and against 
the last red streak of the darkening sky. The cubs 
shrank close to their mother, and she discreetly 
retired into the far background, as into the clearing 
strode an enormous black beast with a brown head 
and white legs, and with a long tassel of hair swing- 
ing from its throat. Seven feet high at the shoulder, 
and more than ten feet from tail to muzzle, stood 
the great bull -moose. The antlers measured seven 
feet from tip to tip. With their vast, flat, palmated 



46 WILD FOLK 

spread, with eight curved, sharp prongs in front, a 
strong man could not have carried them. Yet the 
moose switched them as easily as a girl might settle 
her hat with a toss of her head. 

At the sight of the prowling blackbear, all the 
devilish temper of the thwarted, seeking, brooding 
bull broke loose. His deep-set, wicked little eyes 
burned red, and with a roaring bellow he whirled up 
his vast bulk over the bear. Ordinarily the bear 
would not have waited for any trouble with a bull- 
moose in the month of September. To-night, 
however, he was on his own range. Behind him 
watched his mate and his cubs. The moose was a 
stranger and a trespasser. Morever, the blood- 
hunger had seized upon the bear, and a bear that sees 
red is one of the most dangerous opponents on 
earth. Throwing himself back upon his massive 
haunches, he prepared for a fight to the finish. A 
moose more experienced in bear-ways would have 
relied chiefly on his antlers, whose sharp, twisted 
prongs would cut and tear, while the immense flat 
plates of spreading horn were shields against any 
effective counter- stroke. This particular bull- 
moose, however, had never before met any opponent 
other than a moose who would await his attack, 
and he did not know what a deadly infighter a bear 
is. His only thought was to settle the battle 
before the other could escape. With a bellowing 
squeal of rage, he pivoted on his hind legs and 
struck two pile-driving blows, one after the other, 
with his ponderous keen-edged hoofs. Such a 



BLACKBEAR 47 

blow would have disemboweled a wolf, or killed a 
man, or even have shattered the huge bulk of 
another moose, if once they had landed full and 
fair. 

Just as the moose struck, the bear slipped forward 
and, sudden as the smashing leads came, they were 
not so swift as the lightning-like parries. As each 
fatal hoof came whizzing down, it was met at its 
side by a deft snap of a powerful shaggy forearm, 
and glanced harmlessly off the bear's mighty 
shoulders. The force of the leads and the drive of 
the parries threw the bull off his balance, and for a 
moment he staggered forward on his knees, push- 
ing against the ground with antlers and forelegs, 
to regain his balance. 

That tiny tick of time, however, was all that the 
old bear needed. With the dreadful coughing 
roar that a bear gives when fighting for his life, he 
pivoted toward the right on his humped-up 
haunches. Swinging back his enormous left paw, 
armed with a cestus of steel-like claws, he delivered 
the crashing, smashing swing that only a bear can 
give, one of the most terrible blows known to beasts 
or man. Every ounce of strength in the ridged 
forepaw, every atom of force and spring from the 
coiled masses of humped muscles of the enormous 
hind quarters, went into that mighty blow. It 
landed full and fair on the long neck, just back 
of the flat cheek-bone. The weight of the moose 
approached a ton. Yet that dreadful shattering 
smash whirled the great head around like a feather. 



48 WILD FOLK 

There was a snap., a rending crack, and the whole 
vast beast toppled over on his side, and, with one 
long convulsive shudder, lay dead, his neck broken 
under the impact of that terrible counter. The old 
bear rolled forward, but the black bulk never quiv- 
ered as he towered over his fallen foe, still the king 
of Ms range. 

All that fall the five kept together. Then, one 
day in November, their leader disappeared. Mother 
Bear showed no anxiety, for she knew that late to 
bed and early to rise is the motto of all he-bears, and 
that her mate had left her only because he intended 
to stay up for weeks after his family were asleep for 
the winter. Far up on the mountainside the four 
found a dry cave with a tiny entrance, and spent 
the winter there together. 

When spring came again, the cubs were cubs no 
longer. Without Mother Bear's bulk or shagginess. 
yet all three of them were sleek, powerful, full-grown 
bears instead of the sprawly, leggy cubs of the season 
before. Brownie was still the largest, but Spotty, 
the starved, whimpering little cub of a year ago, was a 
close second to him. Not so massive nor so powerful. 
yet she had a supple, sure swiftness that made her 
his equal in their unceasing hunts for food. Hurry 
as he would, a slim black nose with a silver spot near 
the end would often be thrust in just ahead of him. 
There must have been some charm about that spot, 
because Brownie never got angry, although usually 
any interference with a bear's food is a fighting act. 

As the weeks wore on toward summer. Blackie 



BLACKBEAR 49 

became every day more snappish. She growled if 
Brownie came near her. Mother Bear also began to 
develop a temper. Then came a warm night in 
late spring, when both Blackie and Spotty dis- 
appeared. Brownie sniffed and searched and hunted 
but no trace of either of them could he find. As 
the days lengthened into June, the old bear became 
restless and more and more irritable. One day in 
the middle of the month, she wandered back and 
forth, feeding but little, and so cross that Brownie 
followed her only at a safe distance. He, too, was 
uneasy and unhappy. Something, he knew not 
what, was lacking in his life. As the late twilight 
faded, a great honey-colored moon came up and made 
the woods so bright that the veeries began to sing 
again their strange rippling chords, as if the night- 
wind were blowing across golden harp -strings. 

There before them, in a little glade, suddenly 
towered the black figure of a giant bear. With a 
little whicker Mother Bear moved forward to meet 
her mate, and a moment later led the way toward 
the dim green fastnesses of the forest. Poor, 
untactful, unhappy Brownie started to follow as 
of old. Both of them growled at him so fiercely that 
he stopped in his tracks. As he watched them dis- 
appear into the fragrant dark, he felt that the whole 
Bound Table was dissolved. Never again would the 
little family that had been so happy together be 
united. 

He turned and plunged into a near-by thicket, and 
hurried away lonely and unhappy. For long he 



50 WILD FOLK 

followed a faint trail, until it widened into a green 
circle where some forgotten charcoal-pit had stamped 
its seal forever upon the forest. The air was heavy 
with the drugged perfume of chestnut tassels and 
the fragrance of wild grape, sweetest of all the 
scents of earth. Then, under the love-moon of 
June, in the centre of the tiny circle, there was 
standing before him a lithe, black figure with a 
silver spot showing at the end of her slim tilted 
nose — and all at once Brownie knew what his life 
had lacked. For long and long the two looked at 
each other, and he was lonely and unhappy no more. 
Then slowly, slowly, the silver spot moved away, 
ahead of him, toward the soft scented blackness of 
the deep woods. As he followed, he stopped and 
rumbled out dreadful warnings to a large number of 
imaginary bears, to beware that silver spot. While 
the veeries, whose heartstrings are a lute, sang in 
the thicket, and a little owl crooned a love-song from 
overhead, and the last of the hylas piped like pixies 
from far away, the two followed the path of their 
honeymoon, until it was lost in the depths of that 
night of love. 



Ill 

THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 

In a far northwestern corner of Connecticut, the 
twenty-one named hills of Cornwall slept deep under 
the snow. At the north lay the Barrack, a lonely 
coffin-shaped hill, where, in the deep woods on the 
top, lived old Rashe Howe and his wife, snowbound 
from December until March. Never since the day 
that he journeyed to New York to hear Jenny Lind 
sing, a half -century ago, had she spoken to him. 

Two miles beyond, Myron Prindle and Mrs. 
Prindle lived on the bare top of Prindle Hill, where 
in summer the hermit thrushes sang, and in hidden 
bogs bloomed the pink-and-white lady-slipper, loveli- 
est and loneliest of all of our orchids. Then there 
were Lion's Head, and Rattlesnake Mountain, where 
that king of the dark places of the forest had a den. 
Beyond towered the Cobble, a steep cone-shaped hill, 
which, a century ago, Great-great Uncle Samuel 
Sedgwick used to plough clear to the top. He re- 
lied upon three yoke of oxen and the Sedgwick 
temper; and on calm mornings could be heard dis- 
coursing to said oxen from the top of the Cobble in 
three different towns. 

Over beyond the Cobble was Dibble Hill, with its 
lost settlement of five deserted houses crumbling in 
the woods. Coltsfoot, Green Mountain, and Bally- 

51 



52 WILD FOLK 

hack stretched away to the south and the west; and 
in the northwest was Gold Mountain, with its aban- 
doned gold-mine, from which Deacon Wadsworth 
mined just enough gold to pay for sinking the shaft. 
Then came Blakesley Hill, climbed by a winding 
road three miles long, and Ford Hill, populated by 
Silas Ford and twelve little Fords, and Bunker 
Hill, traversed by the Crooked S's, which drove 
motorists to madness. 

Beyond them all was Great Hill, where grew the 
enormous tree which could be seen against the sky-line 
for ten miles around. Six generations of Cornwall 
people had planned to walk or drive or motor, on 
some day, that never dawned, and look at that tree 
and find out what it was. Some claimed that it was 
an elm, like the vast Boundary Elm which marked 
a corner where four farms met. Others believed it 
to be a red oak; while still others claimed the honor 
for a button-ball. But no one yet has ever known 
for certain. In the very centre and heart of all the 
other hills was Cream Hill, greenest, richest, and 
roundest of them all. On its flanks were Cornwall 
Plains, Cornwall Centre, and Cornwall Hollow; and 
at its foot nestled Cream Pond, with Pond Hill 
sloping straight skyward from its northern shore. 

Ever since November, Cream Hill had been in the 
clutch of winter. There had been long nights when 
the cold stars flared and flamed in a black-violet 
sky, and the snow showed cobalt-blue against the 
dark tree-trunks. Then came the storm. For three 
days the north wind swept, howling like a wolf, down 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 53 

from the far-away Catskills, whirling the lashing, 
stinging snow into drifts ten feet deep. Safe and 
warm in great white farmhouses, built to stand for 
centuries, human-folk stayed stormbound. In the 
morning, again at noon, and once more in the gray 
twilight, the men would plough their way through 
the drifts to the barns, and feed and water the patient 
oxen, the horses stamping in their stalls, the cows in 
stanchions, and the chickens, which stayed on their 
roosts all through the darkened days. In field and 
forest the Seven Sleepers slept safe and warm until 
spring, but the rest of the wild folk were not at truce 
with winter but, hunger-driven, must play at hide- 
and-seek with foe and food. Everywhere on the sur- 
face of the snow the writings of their foot-prints 
appeared and reappeared, as they were swept away 
by the wind or blotted out by the falling flakes. 

Finally, the storm raged itself out, and by the 
afternoon of the third day, the white unwritten page 
of the snow lay across hill and lake and valley. The 
next morning it was scribbled and scrawled all over 
with stories of the life which had pulsed and ebbed 
and passed among the silent trees and across the 
snowbound meadows. Wherever the weed-stalks 
had spread a banquet of seeds, there were delicate 
trails and traceries. Some of them were made up of 
tiny, trident tracks where the birds had fed — j uncos 
with their white skirts and light beaks, tree-sparrows 
with red topknots and narrow white wing-bars, and 
flocks of redpolls down from the Arctic Circle, whose 
rosy breasts looked like peach-blossoms scattered 



54 WILD FOLK 

upon the white snow. Hundreds of larger patterns 
showed where the mice-folk had feasted and frolicked 
all the long night through. Down under the snow, 
their tunnels ran in mazes and labyrinths, with open- 
ings at every weed-stalk up which they could climb in 
hurrying groups into the outside world. Some of 
the trails were lines of little paw-prints separated by 
a long groove in the snow. These were the tracks 
of the deer-mice, whose backs are the color of pine- 
needles, and who wear white silk waistcoats and silk 
stockings and have pink paws and big flappy ears 
and lustrous black eyes. The groove was the mark 
of their long slender tails. Near them were lines of 
slightly larger paw-prints, with only occasional tail- 
marks — the trail of the sturdy, short-tailed, round- 
headed meadow-mouse. 

Here and there were double rows of tiny excla- 
mation points, separated by a tail-mark. Wherever 
this track approached the mazes of the mice paw- 
prints, the latter scattered out like the spokes of a 
wheel. This strange track was that of the masked 
shrew, the smallest mammal in the world, a tiny, blind 
death, whose doom it is to devour its own weight in 
flesh and blood every twenty-four hours. Another 
track showed like a tunnel, with its concave surface 
stamped with zigzag paw-marks. It was the trail of 
the blarina shrew, which twisted here and there as if 
a snake had writhed its way through the powdered 
snow. Again, all other tracks radiated away from 
it; for the blarina is braver and bigger and fiercer 
than its little blood-brother, the masked shrew. 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 55 

Everywhere, across the fields and through the 
swamps and in and out of the woods, was another 
track, made up of four holes in the snow, two far- 
apart and two near-together. Overhead at night in 
the cold sky, below those star- jewels, Mintaka, 
Alnilam, and Alnita, which gleam in the belt of 
Orion, the same track appears where four stars form 
the constellation of Lepus the Hare. Down on 
Connecticut earth, however, the mark was that of the 
cottontail rabbit. 

Among the many snow-stories which showed that 
morning was one tragedy written red. It began 
with the trail of one of the cottontails. At first, the 
near-together holes were in front of the others. That 
marked where Bunny had been hopping leisurely 
along, his short close-set forepaws making the near- 
together holes and his long far-apart hind paws the 
others. At times, where the trail led in the lee of 
thick bushes, a fifth mark would appear. This was 
the print of the powder-puff that the rabbit wears 
for a tail, and showed where he had sat down to rest 
or meditate in the snow. Suddenly, the wide-apart 
marks appeared far in front of the other two. For 
some reason the rabbit had speeded up his pace, and 
with every spring his long hind legs had thrust 
themselves beyond and outside of the short forepaws. 
A little farther along, the tracks of the two forepaws 
showed close to each other, in a vertical instead of a 
horizontal line. This meant to him who could read 
the writing that the rabbit was running at a desper- 
ate speed. At the end of every bound he had twisted 



56 WILD FOLK 

each forepaw inward, so as to thrust them out with 
the greatest possible leverage. 

The trail zigzagged here and there and doubled 
back upon itself and crossed and turned and circled. 
The snow said that the rabbit had been running for 
his life, and every twist and turn told of the desper- 
ation and dumb despair of his flight. Yet nowhere 
was there the print of any pursuer. At last, in a 
little opening among the bushes, the trail ended in a 
circle of trampled, ridged, and reddened snow. At 
the very edge of the blood-stains a great X was 
stamped deep. Farther on was the end of that snow- 
story — the torn, half -eaten body of the rabbit, which 
had run a losing race with death. Again, to him who 
could read the writing on the snow the record was a 
plain one. The X is the sign and seal of the owl- 
folk, just as a K is the mark of the hawk-people. 
On silent, muffled wings, the great horned owl, 
fiercest of all the sky-pirates, had hunted down poor 
Cottontail. All his speed, his twistings and turnings 
and crafty doublings, availed him not against the 
swift flight and cruel, curved talons of this winged 
death. 

Around the trees were other series of tracks, which 
went in fours, something like the rabbit-tracks in 
miniature, except that they showed tiny claw-marks. 
These were where the gray squirrels had ventured 
out to dig under the snow, to find nuts which they 
had buried in the fall, or where their more thrifty 
cousins, the red squirrels, had sallied forth to look up 
hidden hoards in the lee of rocks and in hollow trees. 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 57 

Crossing and recrossing fields and forests in long 
straight lines were the trails of hunting foxes. The 
neat, clearly stamped prints, with never a mark of a 
dragging paw, and the fact that they did not spraddle 
out from a straight line, distinguished them from 
dog- tracks, Along the brooks were the four- and 
five-fingered prints of the muskrat, showing on 
either side of a tail-mark ; and occasionally the double 
foot-prints of that killer, the weasel, and the rarer 
trail of his cousin, the mink. Only the signatures of 
the Seven Sleepers were absent from the smooth 
page. The bear and the bat, the woodchuck and the 
chipmunk, the raccoon, the jumping-mouse, and the 
skunk were all in bed. 

As the sun rose higher and higher on the first day 
after the storm, the sky showed as blue and soft as 
in June, and at sunset the whole western heavens 
seemed to open in a blaze of fiery amber. There 
were strips of sapphire-blue and pools of beryl-green, 
while above was a spindrift of flame the color of the 
terrible crystal. That night the mercury crept up 
higher and higher in the thermometer that hung out- 
side of Silas Dean's store at Cornwall Centre. A 
little screech-owl thought that spring had come, and 
changed his wailing call to the croon which belongs 
to the love-month of May, and the air was full of the 
tinkle and drip and gurgle of the thaw. 

The next morning, in the wet snow a new trail 
appeared — a long chain of slender delicate close-set 
tracks, like a pattern of intricate stitches. The last 
of the Sleepers was awake, for the close-set paw- 



58 WILD FOLK 

prints were none other than those of the unhasting 
skunk. " Don't hurry, others will," is his motto. 
It was just at dawn of the second day of the thaw 
that he appeared in the sunlight. All night long he 
had wandered slowly and sedately in and out of a 
circle not over two hundred yards in diameter. In 
spite, however, of his preoccupied manner and un- 
hurried ways, there was not much that was edible 
which he had overlooked throughout his range; and 
now, at sunrise, which was his bedtime, he was on his 
way home. 

The rays of the rising sun blazoned to the world 
the details of his impressive personality. His most 
noticeable and overshadowing feature was his huge, 
resplendent tail. It waved like a black and white 
banner over his broad back. Throughout its long 
dark hair, coarse as tow, were set bunches of white 
hairs, some of them so long that, when they floated 
out to their full extent, the width of that marvelous 
tail exceeded its length. At the very tip was a white 
tuft which could be erected. Wise wild folk, when 
they saw that tuft standing straight up, removed 
themselves elsewhere with exceeding rapidity. As 
for the unwise — they wished they had. Between 
the small eyes, which were set nearer to the pointed 
nose than to the broad ears, was a fine white stripe 
running back to a white ruff at the back of the neck. 
From this a wide white stripe extended across the 
shoulders, and branched down either flank. 

As he ambled homewards in the sunlight, the 
skunk had such an air of innocence and helplessness, 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 59 

that a young fox, coming down the hillside after a 
night of unsuccessful hunting, decided that the 
decorative stranger must be some unusual kind of 
rabbit, and dashed forward to catch it with a quick 
sidelong snap of his narrow jaws. Unfortunately 
for him, the skunk snapped first. His ancestors had 
learned the secret of the gas-attack a million years 
before the Boche. As the fox rushed upon him, the 
skunk twisted its tail to one side bringing into action 
two glands near the base of its tail which secrete a 
clear golden fluid filled with tiny floating bubbles of 
a devastating gas, against which neither man nor 
beast can sitand. Moreover, the skunk's accurate 
breech-loading and repeating weapon has one other 
improvement not as yet found in any human-made 
artillery. Each gland, beside the hole for long- 
range purposes, is pierced with a circle of smaller 
holes, through which the deadly gas can be sprayed 
in a cloud for work at close quarters. 

Just as the jaws of the fox were opened to seize 
him, the skunk compressed the mat of powerful 
muscles that encircled the two conical scent -glands. 
From the circle of tiny openings a cloud of choking, 
blinding, corrosive gas poured full into the fox's 
astonished face. To human nostrils the very odor 
of the gas is appalling. A mixture of garlic, sewer- 
gas, sulphur-matches, musk, and a number of other 
indescribable smells only faintly defines it. A fox, 
however, is by no means squeamish about smells. 
Many odors which are revolting and unbearable to 
human nostrils arouse only pleasurable sensations in 



60 WILD FOLK 

a fox. What sent him rolling backwards over and 
over, and stiffened and contracted his throat-muscles 
in spasms, was the choking acrid gas itself. It 
strangled him just as the fumes of chlorine or am- 
monia gas will choke a man. Only one thought re- 
mained in that fox's mind. Air, air, fresh untainted 
air, preferably miles away. He departed to find it, 
at an initial velocity of something less than a mile a 
minute, while his adversary lowered his plumed tail 
and regarded him forgivingly. Then, with mincing, 
deliberate steps, the skunk started leisurely back to 
his home on the hillside, which had once been the 
property of a grizzled old woodchuck. 

On a day, however, the woodchuck had come back 
to his burrow, only to find that he had been dispos- 
sessed. The woodchuck is a surly and dogged 
fighter, and always fully able and disposed to protect 
his rights. Yet it took but a single sniff to make 
this one abandon his lands, tenements, and heredita- 
ments, with all easements of ingress, egress, and 
regress. From thenceforth, to the skunk belonged the 
whole complicated system of tunnels and galleries. 
To him belonged the two public entrances and 
a third concealed from sight in a little thicket. 
To him came the cozy nest, with its three exits in the 
centre of a maze of passages, the storehouses, the 
sand-piles, and the sun-warmed slope where the 
former owner had been accustomed to take his ease. 
From that day forward he occupied them all in undis- 
turbed possession. 

After the rout of the fox, the skunk slept until 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 61 

late in the afternoon, and an hour before sunset was 
out again. Here and there, through the bushes and 
among the trees, he tacked and zigzagged in an ap- 
parently absent-minded way. Yet nothing that he 
could eat escaped those small deep-set eyes or that 
long pointed nose. Near the edge of the woods he 
passed under a sugar-maple tree. On a lower limb 
sat Chickaree, the irritable, explosive red squirrel, 
nibbling away at a long cylindrical object which he 
held tightly clasped in his forepaws. As the skunk 
passed underneath, the squirrel stopped to scold at 
him on general principles, and became so emphatic 
in his remarks that he lost his hold of what he had 
been eating, and it fell directly in front of the plod- 
ding skunk. It was only an icicle, but after one 
sniff the skunk proceeded to crunch it down eagerly 
while the red squirrel raved overhead. The day be- 
fore, the squirrel had nibbled a hole in the bark of one 
of the maple limbs, to taste the sweet sap which the 
thaw had started flowing; and during the night 
the running sap had frozen into a long sweet icicle, 
the candy of the wild folk, which heretofore only the 
squirrels had enjoyed. 

The last bit of frozen sweetness swallowed, the 
skunk ambled up the hillside. Suddenly he stopped, 
and sniffed at a little ridge in the snow which hardly 
showed upon the surface. Hardly had he poked his 
pointed nose into the hummock, before it burst like 
a bomb, and out from the snow started a magnificent 
cock grouse. During the storm he had plunged into 
the drift for shelter, and the warmth of his body had 



62 WILD FOLK 

melted a snug little room for him under the snow. 
There, safe and warm, he had feasted on the store 
of rich, spicy seeds that he found on the sweet fern 
under the snow, and for long days and nights had 
been safe from cold and hunger. The thaw, how- 
ever, had thinned his coverlet so that the fine nose 
of the skunk had scented him through the white 
crystals. 

As the partridge broke from the snow, his 
magnificent, iridescent, black-green ruff stood out 
a full three inches around his neck, and his strong 
wings began the whirring flight of his kind. The 
skunk shed his slowness like a mask and. with the 
lightning-like pounce of the weasel family, caught 
the escaping bird just back of the ruff and snapped 
his neck asunder. There was a tremendous flutter- 
ing and beating of brown mottled feathers against 
the white snow, and a minute later he was feeding 
full on the most delicious meat in the world. 

Before he had finished, there came an interruption. 
Down from the top of the hill trotted another skunk, 
an oldtimer whose range marched next to that of the 
first. As the newcomer caught sight of the dead 
partridge, he hurried down to join in the feast. The 
other skunk stopped eating at the sight of this un- 
bidden guest, and made a kind of chirring, complain- 
ing noise, with an occasional low growl. According 
to skunk-standards that was a tremendous exhibi- 
tion of rage, but the second skimk came on unmoved. 
Lender the Skunk Geneva Convention, the use of 
aerial bombs or any form of gas-attack against 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 63 

skunk-kind is barred. In a battle between skunk 
and skunk the fighters must depend upon tooth and 
claw. Accordingly, when the stranger sniffed ap- 
provingly at the half -eaten bird, he was promptly 
nipped by the owner of the same, just back of the 
forepaw. He, in turn, secured a grip on the first 
skunk's neck, and in a moment the atmosphere was 
full of flying snow and whirling fur. The teeth of 
each fighter were so fine and their fur so thick, that 
neither one could do much damage to the other; but 
they fought and rolled and chirred and growled, 
until they looked like a great black-and-white pin- 
wheel. 

The contest caught the eyes of an old red fox, who 
was loping around a ten-mile circle in search of any 
little unconsidered trifle that might come his way. 
He was a seasoned old veteran and, unlike the novice 
of the day before, was well acquainted with skunk- 
ways. Not for any prize that the country round 
about held would he have attacked either one of that 
battling pair. His was a purely sporting interest 
in the fight, until he happened to catch a glimpse of 
the partridge half-covered by the loose snow. On 
the instant, he nobly resolved to play the peacemaker 
and remove the cause of all the trouble. Step by 
step, he stole up closer to the fighters, all set to turn 
and run for his life if either one of them saw him. At 
last he was poised and taut on his tiptoes not six 
feet from the prize. As an extra whirl of the 
contestants carried them to the farthest circumfer- 
ence of the circle of which the partridge was the 



64 WILD FOLK 

centre, the fox started like a sprinter from his marks, 
and reached the grouse in one desperate bound. 

Just at that instant a disengaged eye of the first 
of the skunks came to the surface, in time to see his 
grouse departing toward the horizon, slung over the 
shoulder of the fox, nearly as fast as if it had gone 
under its own wing-power. Instantly the skunk 
released his hold. His opponent did the same, and 
the two scrambled to their feet and for a long moment 
stood sombrely watching the vanishing partridge. 
Then, without a sound, they turned their backs on 
each other and trotted away in opposite directions. 

A week later the thaw was over, and all that hill- 
country was once more in the grip of winter. When 
the temperature went down toward the zero-mark, 
the skunk went back to bed. Rolled up in a round 
ball of fur, with his warm tail wrapped about him 
like a fleecy coverlet, he slept out the cold in the mid- 
most chamber of his den on a bed of soft, dry grass. 
At the first sign of spring he was out again, the 
latest to bed and the earliest to rise of all the 
Sleepers. 

At last the green banners of spring were planted 
on all the hills. Underneath the dry leaves, close to 
the ground, the fragrant pink-and-white blossoms of 
the trailing arbutus showed here and there; while 
deeper in the woods leathery trefoil leaves, green 
above and dark violet beneath, vainly tried to hide 
the blue-and-white-porcelain petals of the hepatica. 
In bare spots the crowded tiny white blossoms of the 
saxifrage showed in the withered grass, and the blood- 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 65 

root, with its golden heart and snowy, short-lived 
petals, and gnarled root which drips blood when 
broken. A little later the hillsides were blue with 
violets, and yellow with adder's-tongue with its 
drooping blossoms and spotted fawn-colored leaves. 
Then came days of feasting, which made up for the 
long lean weeks that had gone before. There were 
droning, blundering June-bugs, crickets, grubs, 
grasshoppers, field-mice, snakes, strawberries, and so 
many other delicacies that the skunk's walk was fast 
becoming a waddle. 

It was on one of those late spring days that the 
Artist and the Skunk had their first and last 
meeting. Said artist was none other than Reginald 
De Haven, whose water-colors were world-famous. 
Reginald had a rosy face, and wore velvet knicker- 
bockers and large chubby legs, and made the people 
of Cornwall suspect his sanity by frequently tele- 
scoping his hands to look at color-values. This 
spring he was boarding with old Mark Hurlbutt, 
over on Cream Hill. On the day of the meeting, 
he had been sketching down by Cream Pond and had 
taken a wood-road home. Where it entered one of 
Mark's upper pastures, he saw a strange black-and- 
white animal moving leisurely toward him, and 
stood still lest he frighten it away. He might have 
spared his fears. The stranger moved toward him, 
silent, imperturbable, and with an assured air. As 
it came nearer, the artist was impressed with its 
color-scheme. The snowy stripe down the pointed 
black nose, the mass of white back of the black head, 



66 WILD FOLK 

and, above all. the resplendent, waving pompon of 
a tail, made it a spectacular study in blacks and 

whites. 

With tiny mincing steps the little animal came 
straight on toward him. It seemed so tame and un- 
concerned, that De Haven planned to catch it and 
carry it back to the farm wrapped up in his coat. 
As he took a step forward, the stranger seemed for 
the first time to notice him. It stopped and 
stamped with its foiepaws, in what seemed to the 
artist a playful and attractive manner. This, if he 
had but known it. was signal number one of the pre- 
scribed three which a well-bred skunk always gives. 
if there be time, even to his bitterest enemies. 

As De Haven moved toward the animal, he was 
ag^ir. interested :: ^: the laTter heist aloft the 
gorgeous black-and-white banner of its clan. 
Rushing on to his ruin, he went unregardingly 
past this second danger-signaL By this time, he 

s within six feet of the skunk, which had now 
come to a full -": : and was watching him intently 
out of its deep-set eyes. As he approached still 
nearer, he n:::ce:i that the white tip of the tail, 
which heretofore had hung dangling, suddenly stif- 
fened and waved erect. ' Like a dag of truce." he 

served whimsically t: ;.::;;— i:, Xever was there 
a r:::re :;:e;. :;:'ul misapprehension. That raising of 
the white tail-tip is the skunk's ultimate warning. 
After that, remains nothing but war and carnage 
and chaos. 

If even then the artist had but stood stony still, 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 



67 



there might have been room for repentance, for 
the skunk is long-suffering and loath to go into 
action. No country-bred guardian angel came to 
De Haven's rescue. Stepping quickly forward, he 
stooped to seize the motionless animal. Even as he 
leaned forward, his fate overtook him. Swinging 
his plumed tail to one side, the skunk bent its back 
at the shoulders, and brought its secondary batteries 
into action. A puff of what seemed like vapor shot 
toward the unfortunate artist, and a second later 
he had an experience in atmospheric values which 
had never come into his sheltered life before. From 
the crown of his velour hat with the little plume at 
the side, down to his suede shoes, he was Maranatha 
and Anathema to the whole world, including him- 
self. Coughing, sneezing, gasping, strangling, 
racked by nausea and wheezing for breath, his was 
the motto of the Restless Club: : ' Anywhere but 
here." His last sight of the animal which had so 
influenced his life showed it demurely moving along 
the path from which it had never once swerved. 

The wind was blowing toward the farmhouse, and 
although it was half a mile away, old Mark Hurl- 
butt soon had advance reports of the battle. 

'A skunk b'gosh!" he remarked to himself, 
stopping on his way to the barn; "and an able- 
bodied one, too," he continued, sniffing the breeze. 

A minute later he saw someone running toward 
him, and recognized his boarder. Even as he saw 
him, a certain aura which hung about the approaching 
figure made plain to Mark what had happened. 



68 WILD FOLK 

" Hey! stop right where you be! " shouted the old 
man. " Another step an' I'll shoot," he went on, 
aiming the shovel which he had in his hand directly 
at the distressed artist's head, and trying not to 
breathe. 

De Haven halted in his tracks. 

" But — but — I require assistance," he pleaded. 

"You sure do," agreed his landlord; " somethin' 
tells me so. Hustle over back of the smoke-house 
and get your clothes off an' I'll join you in a 
minute." 

Mark hurried into the house, and was out again 
almost immediately with a large bottle of benzine, 
a wagon-sponge, a calico shirt, and a pair of over- 
alls. As he came around the corner, the sight of the 
artist posing all pink and white against the smoke- 
house, with a pile of discarded clothes at his feet, was 
too much for the old man, and he cackled like a hen. 

" Darned if vou don't look like one of them famis 
you 're all the time paintin', " he gasped. 

" Shut up ! " snapped the artist. ' You fix me up 
right away, or I'll put these clothes on again and 
walk through every room in your house." 

This threat brought immediate action, and a few 
moments later an expensive and artistic suit of 
clothes reposed in a lonely grave back of Mark's 
smoke-house, where they remain even to this day. 
Thereafter the artist, scrubbed with benzine mitil he 
smelt like a garage, left Cornwall forever. He was 
wearing a mackintosh of his own. Everything 
else belonged to Mark. 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 69 

" It 's lucky for you that he went when he did," 
said old Hen Root the next evening, when the story 
was told at Silas Dean's store at the Centre. 
" You 're gettin' on, Mark," he continued solemnly. 
" If he 'd a' stayed you might have got some kind of 
a stroke or other from over-laughin' yourself. I 
didn't dare to do any work for nigh a week after I 
first saw him telescopin' round in them velvet short 
pants." 

' That 's right," agreed Silas Dean heartily; " an' 
you ain't done any since — nor before," he con- 
cluded, carefully closing the cracker-barrel next to 
Hen. 

It was, perhaps, the meeting with an eminent 
artist that aroused a new ambition in the skunk's 
mind. At any rate, from that day he began to 
haunt the farmyard. The first news that Mark 
had of his presence was when a motherly old hen, 
who had been sitting contentedly on twelve eggs 
for nearly a week, wandered around and around her 
empty nest clucking disconsolately. During the 
night some sly thief had slipped egg after egg out 
from under her brooding wings, so deftly that she 
never even clucked a protest. In the morning 
there were left only scattered egg-shells and a tell- 
tale track in the dust. 

" Blamed old rascal," roared Mark. " First he 
loses me a good boarder an' now he 's ate up a full 
clutch of pedigree white Wyandotte eggs. I'm 
goin' to shoot that skunk on sight." 

Mark was mistaken. Early the next morning he 



70 WILD FOLK 

opened the spring-house to set in a pail of milk. 
There, right beside the magnificent spring which 
boiled and bubbled in the centre of the cement floor, 
a black-and-white stranger was contentedly drink- 
ing from a pan of milk that had been placed there 
to cool. As Mark opened the door, the skunk 
looked at him calmly, and then quietly raised the 
banner which had waved over many a bloodless 
victory. Whereupon the owner of the spring-house 
backed awav, and waited until his visitor had 
finished his drink and disappeared in a patch of 
bushes back of the milk-house. 

" What about all that talk of shootin' that skunk 
at sight? " queried Jonas, the hired man, that evening 
at supper. 

" The trouble was, Jonas," returned Mark con- 
fidentially, " he got the drop on me. If I 'd shot 
I 'd of lost one spring, six gallons of milk, an' a suit 
of clothes." 

" You men are a lot of cowards," scolded his 
wife. ' I 'd of fomid some way to stop that skunk 
a-drinkin' up a whole pan of good milk right in 
front of my eyes. He 'd not bluff me." 

" Mirandy," said Mark solemnly. " you take it 
from me that skunk ain't no bluffer. If you don't 
believe it, telegraph Mr. De Haven." 

In spite of her threat, it was Miranda herself 
who afterwards insisted that the skunk should 
continue to live on the farm without fear or 
reproach. Late one afternoon she had been coming 
down Pond Hill on a search for a new-born calf 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 71 

which, as usual, had been hidden by its mother 
somewhere in the thick woods. The path was 
sunken deep between banks covered with the yellow 
blossoms of the hardhack. At one spot, where the 
way widened into a rude road, a crooked green stem 
stretched out across the pathway, and from it 
swayed a great rose-red flower like some exquisite 
carved shell. It was the moccasin flower, the most 
beautiful of our early orchids. Miranda bent down 
to pick it with a little gasp of delight. 

Suddenly, from just beyond, came a warning 
hiss, and in front of her reared the bloated swollen 
body of a fearsome snake. The reptile's head was 
flattened out until it was half as wide as her hand, 
and it swelled and hissed rhythmically like the ex- 
haust of a steam-pipe, and repeatedly struck out in 
her direction, the very embodiment of blind, venom- 
ous rage. Half paralyzed with fear, Miranda 
moved backward and began to wonder what she 
would do. Night was coming on, and if she went 
back over the hill, it would be dark before she could 
reach home. As for going around, no power on 
earth would have persuaded her to step into the 
thick bushes on either side of the path, convinced as 
she was that they must be swarming with snakes. 

At this psychological moment, ambling unconcern- 
edly up the path, came the same black-and-white 
beast about which she had spoken so bitterly the 
day before. As it caught sight of the snake coiling 
and rearing and hissing, the skunk's gait quickened, 
and it approached the threatening figure with cheer- 



< - 



2 WILD FOLK 



ful alacrity. The snake puffed and hissed and struck, 
but the skunk never even hesitated. Holding the 
reptile down with its slim paws it nibbled off the 
threatening head, neatly skinned the squirming body, 
and before Mrs. Hurlbutt's delighted eyes ate it up. 
Then, without apparently noticing her at all. it went 
on up the hill until lost to sight among the 
hardbacks. 

It would have been impossible to convince 
Miranda that the snake was nothing but a harmless 
puff-adder, and that, in spite of its bluffing ways, 
it had no fangs and never was known to bite. From 
that day on the skunk was envisaged in her mind as 
the guardian angel of the farm, and the edict went 
out that on no account was it to be molested. Xot 
even when most of the bees from one of Mark's 
cherished swarms disappeared into its leather-lined 
interior, would Miranda permit any adverse action. 

'"'Some skunk that!' jeered Mark. "You let 
it get awav with bees an* boarders an' milk an' eggs. 
an' never sav a word. I wisht vou cared as much 
for your husband." 

" I might, if he was as brave — an' good-looking," 
murmured Miranda. 

It was the sweet influences of the month of June 
which settled the dispute. Jonas had been down in 
the sap-works, where the vast sugar-maples grew 
below the milk-house meadow. As he came back 
up the slope, the great golden moon of June was 
showing its rim over Pond Hill. Ahead of him he 
saw a familiar black-and-white shape moving 



THE SEVENTH SLEEPER 73 

toward the woods. Even as he watched, a proces- 
sion came down to meet him. At its head marched 
another full-grown skunk, while back of her was a 
long winding procession of little skunks. One, 
two, three, four, five, six — Jonas counted them up 
to ten, and the last one of all was jet-black except for 
a tiny stripe of white on its muzzle. There was a 
long pause as the lone skunk met the band. Then 
suddenly he was at the head of it, and the long pro- 
cession trailed contentedly after him. Separated 
from him by a winter and a spring, Mrs. Skunk had 
rejoined her mate, bringing her sheaves with her. 
Away from the tame folk to return no more, the 
wild folk moved on and on into the heart of the sum- 
mer woods. 



IV 
HIGH SKY 

"Clang! Clang! Clang!" — the sound drifted 
down from mid-skv. as if the ice-cold gates of winter 
were opening. A gaggle of Canada geese,, wearing 
white bibs below their black heads and necks,, came 
beating down the wind, shouting to earth as they 
flew. Below them, although it was still fall, the tan- 
colored marsh showed ash-gray stretches of new 
ice, with here and there blue patches of snow. 
Suddenly, faint and far sounded other notes, as of a 
distant horn, and a company of misty- white trum- 
peter swans swept along the sky, gleaming like silver 
in the sun. Down from the Arctic tundras they had 
come, where during the short summer their great 
nests had stood like watchtowers above the level 
sphagnum bogs; for the trumpeter swan, like the 
eagle, scorns to hide its nest and fears no foe of earth 
or air. 

As their trumpet notes pealed across the marsh, 
they were answered everywhere by the confused cries 
and calls of innumerable waterfowl; for when the 
swan starts south, it is no time for lesser breeds to 
linger. Wisps of snipe and badlings of duck sprang 
into the air. The canvasback ducks, with their dark 
red heads and necks, grunted as they flew; the wings 
of the golden-eye whistled, the scaup purred, the 

74 



HIGH SKY 75 

black ducks, and the mallards with emerald-green 
heads, quacked, the pintails whimpered — the air 
was full of duck-notes. As they swept southward, 
the different families took their places according to 
their speed. Well up in the van were the canvas- 
backs, who can travel at the rate of one hundred and 
sixty feet per second. Next came the pintails, and 
the wood-ducks, whose drakes have wings of velvet- 
black, purple, and white. The mallards and the 
black ducks brought up the rear; while far behind a 
cloud of blue-winged teal whizzed down the sky, the 
lustrous light blue of their wings glinting like 
polished steel in the sunlight. Flying in perfect 
unison, the distance between them and the main flock 
rapidly lessened; for the blue-winged teal, when it 
settles down to fly, can tick off two miles a minute. 
A few yards back of their close cloud followed a 
single green-winged teal, a tiny drake with a 
chestnut-brown head brightly striped with green, 
who wore an emerald patch on either wing. 

In a moment the blue-wings had passed the 
quacking mallards and black ducks as if they had 
been anchored in the sky. The whistlers and pintails 
were overtaken next, and then, more slowly, the little 
flock, flying in perfect form, began to cut down the 
lead of the canvasbacks in front. Little by little, 
the tiny teal edged up, in complete silence, to the 
whizzing, grunting leaders, until at last they were 
flying right abreast of them. At first slowly, and 
then more and more rapidly, they drew away, until 
a clear space of sky showed between the two flocks, 



76 WILD FOLK 

including the green-winged follower. Then, for the 
first time, the blue-wings spoke, voicing their victory 
in soft, lisping notes, which were echoed by a mellow 
whistle from the green-wing. 

The sound of his own voice seemed suddenly to 
remind the latter that he was one of the speed-kings 
of the sky. An inch shorter than his blue-winged 
brother, the green-winged teal is yet a hardier and a 
swifter bird. Unhampered by any flock-formation, 
the wing-beats of this lone flyer increased until he 
shot forward like a projectile. In a moment he was 
up to the leaders, then above them; and then, with 
a tremendous burst of speed, he passed and went 
slashing down the sky alone. Farther and farther in 
front flashed the little green-striped head, and more 
and more faintly his short whistles came back to the 
flock behind. 

Perhaps it was his call, or it might have been the 
green gleam of his speeding head, that caught the 
attention of a sky-pirate hovering in a reach of sky 
far above. Like other pirates, this one wore a curl- 
ing black moustache in the form of a black stripe 
around its beak which, with the long, rakish wings 
and hooked, toothed beak, marked it as the duck- 
hawk, one of the fiercest and swiftest of the falcons. 
As the hawk caught sight of the speeding little teal, 
his telescopic eyes gleamed like fire, and curving 
down through the sky, in a moment he was in its 
wake. Every feather of the little drake's taut and 
tense body showed his speed, as he traveled at a two- 
mile-a-minute clip. 



HIGH SKY 77 

Not so with the lithe falcon who pursued him. 
The movements of his long, narrow wings and arrowy- 
body were so effortless that it seemed impossible that 
he could overtake the other. Yet every wing-beat 
brought him nearer and nearer, in a flight so swift 
and silent that not until the shadow of death fell upon 
the teal did the latter even know that he was being 
pursued. Then, indeed, he squawked in mortal ter- 
ror, and tried desperately to increase a speed which 
already seemed impossible. Yet ever the shadow 
hung over him like a black shroud, and then, in a flash, 
the little green-wing's fate overtook him. Almost 
too quickly for eye to follow, the duck-hawk deliv- 
ered the terrible slash with which falcons kill their 
prey, and in an instant the teal changed from a live, 
vibrant, arrow-swift bird to a limp mass of fluttering 
feathers, which dropped like a plummet through the 
air. With a rush, the duck-hawk swung down after 
his dead quarry, and catching it in his claws, swooped 
down to earth to feast full at his leisure. 

Far, far above the lower reaches of the sky, where 
the cloud of waterfowl were flying, above rain and 
storm and snow, was a solitude entered by only a few 
of the sky-pilgrims. There, three miles high, were 
naked space and a curved sky that shone like a great 
blue sun. In the north a cluster of black dots showed 
against the blue. Swiftly they grew in size, until 
at last, under a sun far brighter than the one known 
to the earthbound, there flashed through the glitter- 
ing air a flock of golden plover. They were still 
wearing their summer suits, with black breasts and 



78 WILD FOLK 

sides, while every brown-black feather on back and 
crown was widely margined with pure gold. Before 
they reached Patagonia the black would be changed 
for gray ; for the Arctic summer of the golden plover 
is so short that he must moult, and even do his court- 
ing, on the wing. 

This company had nested up among the everlast- 
ing snows, and the mileage of their flight was to be 
measured by thousands instead of hundreds. To- 
day they were on their first lap of fifteen hundred 
miles to the shores of Nova Scotia. There they 
would rest before taking the Water Route which 
only kings of the air can follow. Straight across the 
storm-swept Atlantic and the treacherous Gulf of 
Mexico, two thousand four hundred miles, they 
would fly, on their way to their next stop on the pam- 
pas of the Argentine. Fainter-hearted flyers chose 
the circuitous Island Passage, across Cuba, Porto 
Rico, and the Antilles, to the northern shore of South 
America. The chuck-will's -widow of the Gulf 
States, cuckoos from New England, gray-checked 
thrushes from Quebec, bank-swallows from Labra- 
dor, black-poll warblers from Alaska, and hosts 
and myriads of bobolinks from everywhere took 
the Bobolink Route from Florida to Cuba, and 
the seven hundred miles across the Gulf to South 
America. 

Only a few of the highest-powered water-birds 
shared the Water Route with the plover. When 
this flock started, they had circled and wheeled and 
swooped in the wonderful evolutions of their kind, 



HIGH SKY 79 

but had finally swung into their journey-gait — and 
when a plover settles down to straight flying, it would 
seem to be safe from anything slower than a bullet. 

Far above the flock floated what seemed a fleck of 
white cloud blown up from the lower levels. As it 
drifted swiftly down toward the speeding plover, it 
grew into a great bird sparsely mottled with pearl- 
gray, whose pointed wings had a spread of nearly 
five feet. Driven down from Greenland by cold and 
famine, a white gyrfalcon was haunting these soli- 
tudes like some grim ghost of the upper sky. His 
fierce eyes were of a glittering black, as was the tip 
of his blue hooked beak. 

As the plover whizzed southward on their way to 
Summer, some shadow of the coming of the falcon 
must have fallen upon them; for suddenly the whole 
flock broke and scattered through the sky, like a 
dropped handful of beads, each bird twisting and 
doubling through the air, yet still shooting ever south- 
ward at a speed which few other flyers could have 
equaled. Unluckily for the plover, the gyrfalcon is 
perhaps the fastest bird that flies, and moreover it 
has all of that mysterious gift of the falcon family of 
following automatically every double and twist and 
turn of any bird which it elects to pursue. This one 
chose his victim, and in a flash was following it 
through the sky. Here and there, back and forth, 
up and down, in dizzy circles and bewildering curves, 
the great hawk sped after the largest of the plover. 
As if driven in some invisible tandem, the white form 
of the falcon kept an exact distance from the plover, 



80 WILD FOLK 

until at last the latter gave up circling and doubling 
for a stretch of straight flight. In an instant, the 
flashing white wings of the falcon were above it ; there 
was the same arrowy pounce with which the lesser 
falcon had struck down the teal ; and, a moment later, 
the gyrfalcon had caught the falling body, and was 
volplaning down to earth with the dead plover in its 
claws. 

For a time after this tragedy the sky seemed 
empty, as the scattered plover passed out of sight, 
to come together as a flock many miles beyond. 
Then a multitude of tiny black specks showed 
for an instant in the blue. They seemed almost like 
motes in the sunlight, save that, instead of dancing up 
and down, they shot forward with an almost incon- 
ceivable swiftness. It was as if a stream of bullets 
had suddenly become visible. Immeasurably faster 
than any bird of even twice its size, a flock of ruby- 
throated humming-birds, the smallest birds in the 
world, sped unfalteringly toward the sunland of the 
South. Their buzzing flight had a dipping, rolling 
motion, as they disappeared in the distance on their 
way to the Gulf of Mexico, whose seven hundred 
miles of treacherous water they would cover without 
a rest. 

As the setting sun approached the rim of the 
world, the lower clouds changed from banks of snow 
into masses of fuming gold, splashed and blotched 
with an intolerable crimson. Again the sky was full 
of birds. Those last of the day-flyers were the swal- 
low-folk. White-bellied tree swallows; barn swal- 



HIGH SKY 



81 



lows, with long forked tails; cliff swallows, with 
cream-white foreheads; bank and rough-winged 
swallows, with brown backs — the air was full of their 
whirling, curving flight. With them went their big 
brothers, the purple martins, and the night hawks, 
with their white-barred wings, which at times, as they 
whirled downward, made a hollow twanging noise. 
With the flock, too, were the swifts, who sleep and 
nest in chimneys, and whose winter home no man yet 
has discovered. 

As the turquoise of the curved sky deepened into 
sapphire, a shadowy figure came toward the circling, 
flashing throng of swifts and swallows. The new- 
comer's great bare wings seemed made of sections of 
brown parchment jointed together unlike those of 
any bird. Nor did any bird ever wear soft brown fur 
frosted with silver, nor have wide flappy ears and 
a hobgoblin face. Miles above the ground this earth- 
born mammal was beating the birds in their own ele- 
ment. None of the swallows showed any alarm as the 
stranger overtook them, for they recognized him as 
the hoary bat, the largest of North American bats, 
who migrates with the swallows and, like them, feeds 
only on insects. 

As the sun sank lower, the great company of the 
bird-folk swooped down toward the earth, for swal- 
lows, swifts, and martins are all day-flyers. Not so 
with the bat. In the fading light, he flew steadily 
southward alone — but not for long. Up from earth 
came again the great gyrfalcon, his fierce hunger un- 
satisfied with the few mouthfuls torn from the 



82 WILD FOLK 

plover's plump breast. As his fierce eyes caught 
sight of the flitting bat, his wings flashed through the 
air with the same speed that had overtaken the plover. 
No bird that flies could have kept ahead of the rush 
of the great hawk through the air. 

A mammal, however, is farther along in the scale 
of life than a bird, and more efficient, even as a flyer. 
As the pricked-up ears of the bat caught the swish 
of the falcon's wings, the beats of its own skin- 
covered pair increased, and the bird suddenly ceased 
to gain. Disdaining to double or zigzag, the great 
bat flew the straightaway race which the falcon loves, 
and which would have meant quick death to any bird 
who tried it. Skin, however, makes a better flying 
surface than feathers, and slowly but unmistakably 
the bat began to draw away from its pursuer. The 
gyrfalcon is the speed-king among birds, but the 
hoary bat is faster still. Five, ten, fifteen minutes 
passed before the hawk realized that he was being 
outflown. Increase his speed as he would, the bat, 
in an effortless nonchalant manner, moved farther 
away. When only a streak of silver sky, with a shoal 
of little violet clouds, was left of the daylight the 
gyrfalcon gave up the chase. As he swooped down 
to earth like a white meteor, the brown figure of the 
bat disappeared in the violet twilight, beating, beat- 
ing his way south. 

As the sky darkened to a peacock-blue, and a faint 
amber band in the west tried to bar the dark, sud- 
denly the star-shine was full of soft pipings and 
chirpings. The night-flyers had begun their journey, 



HIGH SKY 83 

and were calling back and forth heartening each other 
as they flew through the long dark hours. Against 
the golden disc of the rising moon a continuous pro- 
cession of tiny black figures showed the whole sky to 
be full of these pilgrims from the north. The " chink, 
chink " of the bobolinks dropped through the still- 
ness like silver coins; and from higher up came the 
' tsip, tsip, tsip " of the black-poll warblers, all the 
way from the Magdalen Islands. With them were a 
score or so of others of the great warbler family. 
Black-throated blues, Cape Mays, redstarts, golden- 
wings, yellow warblers, black-throated greens, 
magnolias, myrtles, and tiny parulas — myriads of 
this many-colored family were traveling together 
through the sky. With them went the vireos, the 
orioles, the tanagers, and four different kinds of 
thrushes, with a dozen or so other varieties of birds 
following. 

Most of them had put on their traveling clothes 
for the long journey. The tanagers had laid aside 
their crimson and black, and wore yellowish-green 
suits. The indigo bird had lost his vivid blue, the 
rose stain of the rose-breasted grosbeak was gone, 
along with the white cheeks of the black-poll warbler 
and the black throat of the black-throated green, 
while the bobolinks wore sober coats of olive-buff 
streaked with black, in place of their cream-white 
and velvet black. 

Once during the night, as the army crossed an 
Atlantic cape, a lighthouse flashed its fatal eye at 
them. Immediately the ranks of the flyers broke, 



84 WILD FOLK 

and in confused groups they circled around and 
around the witch-fire which no bird may pass. For 
hours thev new in dizzying circles, until, weary and 
bewildered, some of the weaker ones began to sink 
toward the dark water. Fortunately for them, at 
midnight the color of the light changed from white 
to red. Instantly the prisoners were freed from the 
spell which only the white light lays upon them, and 
in a minute the air was filled with glad flight-calls, as 
the released ranks hurried on and away through the 
dark. 

All night long they flew steadily, and turned earth- 
ward only at sunrise. As the weary flyers sought 

• • • o 

the trees and fields for rest and food, overhead.. 
against a crimson and gold dawn, passed the long- 
distance champion of the skies — the Arctic tern. 
with its snow-white breast, black head, curved wings, 
and forked tail. Nesting as far north as it can find 
land, only seven and a half degrees from the Pole, 
it flies eleven thousand miles to the Antarctic, and, 
ranging from pole to pole, sees more daylight than 
any other creature. For eight months of its year 
it never knows night, and during the other four has 
more daylight than dark. S corner of all lands, 
tireless, unresting, this dweller in the loneliest places 
of earth flashed white across the dawn-sky — and was 
gone. 



V 

THE LITTLE PEOPLE 

The swamp -maples showed rose-red and gold- 
green in the warm sunlight, and the woods were 
etched lavender-brown against a heliotrope sky. 
The bluebird, with the sky-color on his back and the 
red-brown of earth at his breast, called, " Far-away! 
far-away! far-away!" in his soft sweet contralto. 
From a wet meadow a company of rusty blackbirds, 
with short tails and white eyes, sang together like a 
flock of creaking wheelbarrows, with single split 
notes sounding constantly above the squealing chorus. 
Beyond the meadow was a little pool, where the air 
was vibrant with the music of the frogs. The hylas 
sang like a chest of whistles so shrill that the air 
quivered with their song. At intervals, a single clear 
flute-note rose above the chorus, the love-call of the 
little red salamander; while the drawling mutter of 
cricket-frogs, the trilled call of the wood-frogs, and 
the soft croon of the toad added delicate harmonies. 
Near-by a song-sparrow sang wheezingly from a 
greening willow tree, but its note sounded flat com- 
pared with the shrill, high sweetness of the batra- 
chian chorus. 

Near the top of Prindle Hill was a dry warm 
slope, with stretches of underbrush, pasture, and 
ledges of rock rising to the patch of woods which 

85 



86 WILD FOLK 

crowned the crest of the hill. Beyond was a tinv 
lake. Everywhere along the sunny slope were small 
round holes bored through the tough turf. As the 
sun rose higher and higher, little waves of heat pene- 
trated deep below the grass-roots. 

Suddenly, from out of one of the holes, a little 
pointed nose was thrust, and a second later the first 
chipmunk of the year darted above ground from the 
burrow where he had slept out the long winter. His 
dark pepper-and-salt colored back had a black-brown 
stripe down the centre and four others in pairs along 
either side, separated by strips of cream-white. His 
cheeks, flanks, feet, and the underside of his black 
fringed tail were of a light fawn-color, and he wore 
a silky white waistcoat. Erecting his white-tipped 
tail, he sat up on his haunches and tipping back his 
head, began to sing the spring song which every 
chipmunk must sing when he first comes above 
ground at the dawn of the year. * Chuck-a-chuck- 
a-chuck-a-chuck-a-chuck," he chirped loudly, at the 
rate of two chirps per second. 

At the very first note sharp noses and bright black 
eyes appeared at every hole, and in a second a score 
or more other singers had whisked out and joined in 
the spring chorus, each one bent on proving that his 
notes were the loudest and clearest of any on the hill. 
One of the last to begin was a half-grown chipmunk. 
who had been crowded out of the family burrow by 
new arrivals the autumn before. Fortunately for 
him, however, the next burrow was occupied by a 
chipmunk of an inquiring disposition. Said dis- 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 87 

position caused him to wait to investigate the habits 
of a passing red fox. Thereafter his burrow was 
to let, and was immediately taken possession of by 
the young chipmunk aforesaid. 

This new tenant came out timidly, even when he 
felt the thrill of spring. Once above ground, 
however, he simply had to sing. At his very first 
note, he sensed a difference between his voice and 
those of all the others. Whereas they sang " Chuck- 
a-chuck-a-chuck," he sang "Chippy, chippy, chippy. " 
To his delighted ear his own higher notes were far 
superior to those of his companions, and he shrilled 
away, ecstatically, with half -closed eyes. Ten min- 
utes went happily by. Then a singer on the outskirts 
caught sight of a marsh-hawk quartering the hillside, 
and gave the alarm-squeal as he dove into his hole. 
The song broke in the middle, as every singer whisked 
underground and the annual spring song was over. 
Thereafter the customary caution of a chipmunk- 
colony was resumed. 

At first, Chippy ventured but seldom outside of 
his new burrow. Far in under the turf was the store- 
house, filled by its first owner full of hazel-nuts, 
cherry-pits, wild buckwheat, buttercup seeds, maple- 
keys, and other chipmunk staples, all carefully 
cleaned, dried, and stored. On these he lived largely 
during the first few weeks of spring. Then came a 
day when he entered his front door with a flying leap, 
only to find a burly and determined stranger blocking 
his way. A bustling and lusty bachelor from 
another colony had spied the burrow from the stone 



SS WILD FOLK 

wall, the broad high" lU chipmunks, and had 

decided to make it his own by right of conquest. 

In vain Chippy fought for his home, at first des- 
perately and then despairingly. The other chip- 
munk had the advantage of weight, experience, and 
position, and Chippy a forced slowly out into the 
wide world. Squealing and chirping with rage. 
with his soft fur fluffed up all over his sleek body, 
he came out into the sunlight. He saw nothing. 
heard nothing, scented nothing, hostile. ITet, obey- 
ing the little alarm-bell that rings in every chip- 
munk's brain, he dashed desperately for the shelter 
of the stone walL It was well for him that he 1 
As he crossed the wide stretch of turf like a tawny 
streak, there was a whirl of wing-beats, the flash of 
a gray-brown body balanced by a narrow black- 
balled tail, and the shadow of death fell upon him 
e~en is he neared his refuge. With a frightened 
squeal, Chippy put every atom of the force which 
pulsed through his little vibrant body into one last 
spring. Even as he disappeared headlong into a 
chink between two large stones, a set of keen cL m - 
clamped vainly through the long hairs of his vanish- 
ing tail, as a sharp-shinned hawk somersaulted with a 
backward sweep of its wings, to avoid dashing itself 
against the wall. For a moment it vibrated in the 
air with cruel, crooked beak half -open, searching the 
wall with unflinching golden eyes, and then skimmed 
sullenlv away. 

In a minute a pointed nose was poked out from the 
stones and carefully winnowed the air. Satisfied 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 89 

that the coast was clear, Chippy at last scurried up to 
the top of the wall, where he could see on all sides, 
with a wide cranny conveniently near; for a chip- 
munk who desires to live out all his days must never 
be more than two jumps from a hole. Sitting up on 
the stone, he produced from one of the pockets which 
he wore in either cheek a large hickory nut, which had 
been pouched there all through his fight and flight. 
Holding it firmly in both his little three-fingered, 
double-thumbed forepaws, he nibbled an alternate 
hole in either side, through which he extracted every 
last fragment of the rich, brown kernel within. 
While he ate, there was never a second during which 
his sharp black eyes were not scanning every inch of 
the circumference of which his stone was the centre. 
There was not an instant that his sharp ears were 
not pricked up to catch the slightest sound, and his 
keen nostrils to sniff the faintest scent, that would 
indicate the approach of death in any of the many 
forms in which it comes to chipmunks. 

His meal finished, Chippy turned his instanta- 
neous mind to the next most important item of life. 
On his list of necessities, Home stared at him in capi- 
tals just under the item Food. A stone wall makes 
a good lodging-house but a poor home, for it has too 
many doors. Wherefore Chippy scampered along 
the top of the wall, his tail erect like a plume, scan- 
ning the hillside as he ran for a good building-site. 
At last, he came to a dry bank covered with short 
twisted ringlets of tough grass, which sloped up from 
the stone wall and ended in a clump of sweet fern. 



90 WILD FOLK 

With a flying leap, he struck the middle of the bank, 
and with another bound was safe in the depths of 
the sweet fern. 

From there he commenced to dig. No one has 
ever yet found a fleck or flake of loose earth near the 
entrance to a chipmunk home. This is because he 
always starts digging at the other end. Working 
like a little steam- shovel, within a few days Chippy 
had dug a series of intersecting tunnels, of which the 
main one ended between two stones at the base of 
the wall. Far down among the roots of a rotting 
stump, he made a warm nest of leaves and grass. 
From this sleeping-room a twisted passage led to a 
rounded storeroom on the other side of the stump. 
No less than three emergency entrances and exits 
were made within a ten-foot circle; and beside the 
bedroom and storeroom he dug a kitchen midden, 
where all refuse and garbage could be deposited and 
covered with earth, in accordance with the custom of 
all properly brought-up chipmunks. When at last 
every grain of earth had been carried out through the 
first hole among the overshadowing ferns, he sealed 
it up from the outside, and covered the packed earth 
with leaves. Then he took a day off. Climbing to 
the top of the wall, he perched himself where a single 
bound would take him to the main entrance of his 
new home, and with his little nose pointed skyward 
told the world, at the rate of one hundred and thirty 
chirps per minute, what a wonderful home was his. 
Thereafter began an unending seach for food. On 
the far side of the slope he found a thicket of hazel 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 91 

bushes, which had been overlooked by the rest of the 
colony. Thence he would return to his burrow, look- 
ing as if he had a bad attack of mumps. Really it 
was only nuts. Twelve hazel-nuts, or four acorns, 
were Chippy's tonnage. 

By the time the flood-tide of summer had set in, 
Chippy had reached the high watermark of his youth. 
Larger, stronger, and swifter than any of the 
younger members of the colony, he soon began to 
rival the elders of the community in wisdom. Then 
suddenly there came to the Little People of the 
Woods, a wandering demon of blood and carnage. 
One sunny afternoon, while every chipmunk on that 
hillside was abroad, playing, feasting, hoarding, 
singing, there flashed in among them a reddish 
animal, with a long black-tipped tail, white chin and 
cheeks, and a fierce pointed head. Sniffing here and 
there like a trailing hound, it darted down upon the 
little colony. 

It was the long-tailed, or great, weasel, whose 
movements are so swift as to baffle even the quickest 
eye. Caught too far from their burrows, the lives 
of four chipmunks went out like the puff of a candle. 
Then the high alarm- squeal ran up and down the hill- 
side, and every chipmunk within hearing dived under- 
ground where they were all safe ; for the great weasel 
is just one size too large to enter a chipmunk's bur- 
row. Hither and there the weasel wound its way, 
like some fierce swift snake. With its flaming eyes, 
white cheeks dabbled red with blood, and flat tri- 
angular head swaying from side to side on a long 



92 WILD FOLK 

neck, it looked the very personification of sudden 
death. 

Farthest from home of all the others, Chippy, the 
swift and wise, faced the death which had overtaken 
the slow and foolish. For the first time in his life 
he had climbed to the tiptop of an elm tree. There 
among the topmost slender sprays he was feasting on 
elm-seeds, and came hurrying down at the first alarm- 
note. Just as he had nearly reached the ground, 
around the foot of the tree trunk was thrust the 
bloody face of the killer. There is something so 
devilish and implacable in the appearance of a hunt- 
ing weasel, that it cows even the bravest of the smaller 
animals. A gray old rat, ordinarily a grim cynical 
fighter with no nerves to speak of, will run squealing 
in terror from before a weasel: while a rabbit, when 
it sees the red death on his trail, forgets his swiftness 
and cowers on the ground. 

Something of the same spell came over Chippy as. 
for the first time, he faced the demon of his tribe. 
Yet he kept his head enough to realize that his only 
hope was aloft, and instantly whisked back up the 
great trunk. Unfortunately for him the versatile 
weasel is at home on. under, and above ground. 
The chipmunk had hardly reached the topmost 
branch, when he felt it sway under the quick, darting 
motions of his pursuer. Up and up he went, until 
he clung to the tiny swaying twigs at the very spire 
and summit of the elm, seventv-five feet from the 
ground. 

In a moment, the bloody muzzle of his pursuer was 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 93 

sniffing along his trail. Hunting by scent, like all 
of its kind, the weasel wound his way up through the 
twigs, nearer and nearer to the trembling chipmunk. 
Twelve inches away, the weasel stopped and, 
thrusting out its long neck, seemed for the first time 
to see the little animal just above. A green gleam 
showed in the depths of the malignant eyes. 

As it shifted its weight on the swaying twigs pre- 
paratory to the lightning-like pounce which would 
end the chase, the chipmunk, with a little wailing cry, 
let go his hold and fell like a stone down through the 
green screen of leaves and twigs that stretched 
between him and the ground far below. Even as he 
whirled through space, his little brain was alert to 
seize upon every chance for life. As he struck twig 
after twig, he clutched at them with his forepaws but 
could get no firm hand-hold. Fifty feet down, he 
managed to hook both of his little arms across a twig 
about the size of a man's thumb. A cross-twig kept 
his hold from slipping off, and swinging back and 
forth like a pendulum, he at last managed to clamber 
up into a crotch of this outer branch and crouched 
there, panting. 

In a moment there was a scratching noise along the 
tree trunk, and the weasel came down in long spirals 
instead of climbing straight down as would a squirrel. 
The branch at the end of which the chipmunk was 
perched ran out from the main trunk, then turned at 
right angles and grew down almost perpendicularly, 
making a sharp elbow. The weasel descended, 
weaving his broad, triangular head back and forth, 



94 WILD FOLK 

with little looping movements of his long neck, and 
sniffing the air as he came. When he reached the 
branch where the chipmunk was, he stopped and 
crept along the limb to the elbow. This was too 
much for him, skillful climber as he was. The per- 
pendicular drop of the branch, its small size and 
smooth bark, all combined against him. Three times 
he tried to follow it down. Each time he slipped so 
that it became evident to him that another step would 
break his hold and send him crashing to the ground. 

All this time the chipmunk was in full sight, yet 
the bloodshot eyes of his enemy seemed to overlook 
him entirely. Again and again the weasel sniffed 
the air, and repeatedly returned to the limb, evi- 
dently convinced that his intended prey was there. 

Throughout, the chipmunk clung to the branch, 
silent and motionless. Only the throbbing of his 
silky white breast showed how his heart pounded as he 
watched the trailing death approaching. At last, the 
weasel seemed to give up the hunt and reluctantly 
wound his way down the main trunk and disappeared 
behind the tree. 

For a full half -hour the chipmunk clung to his ref- 
uge without the slightest movement. Finally, when 
it seemed as if his pursuer were gone for good, the 
little animal moved cautiously up the branch, and 
managed to negotiate the elbow which had baffled his 
heavier pursuer. With the same caution he crept 
down the trunk and, after looking all around, 
finally leaped to the turf beyond. As he struck the 
ground, there was a rustle from the depths of a 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 95 

thicket a few rods away, and out darted the weasel, 
which, with the fierce patience of his kind, had been 
lurking there and came between the chipmunk and 
the scattered homes of the colony. 

Over the hilltop was the only way of escape. 
There lay a patch of deep woods, where the trees 
grew thick and dark over a ledge of rock which 
stretched up to the very summit. There, too, was 
hidden some mystery as black as the shade above that 
lonely ledge. Often there had been no return for 
chipmunks crossing that dark crest. Instinctively 
the fugitive avoided the woods and circled the hill 
hoping to find some refuge on the farther side. 

Long ago, the weasel-folk have learned that a 
straight line is the shortest distance between two 
points. Wherefore to-day the hunter followed the 
diameter of the circle that the chipmunk was making 
around the wooded hilltop. Like a flash, with tail 
up and head down, the weasel wound his way among 
the rocks and crowded trees which covered the hill's 
crest. As his triangular head thrust itself beyond a 
pointed rock which jutted out from the ledge, his 
quick nostrils caught a sinister, sickly scent, and he 
checked in his stride but — too late. His flaming 
red eyes looked directly into the fixed glare of two 
other eyes, black, lidless, with strange oval pupils, 
and set deep in a cruel heart-shaped head, which 
showed a curious hole between eye and nostril, the 
hall-mark of the fatal family of pit-vipers to which 
the rattlesnake, copperhead, and moccasin belong. 

For a second the fierce beast and the grim snake 



96 WILD FOLK 

faced each other. The eyes of none of the mammals 
have a fiercer, more compelling gaze than those of the 
weasel-folk when red with the rage of slaughter. 
Yet no beast can outstare that grim ruler of the 
dark places of the forest, the timber rattlesnake, and 
in a moment the weasel started to dodge back. Not 
even his flashing speed, however, availed against 
the stroke of the snake. Faster than any eye could 
follow, the flat head shot forward, gaping horribly, 
while two keen movable fangs were thrust straight 
out like spear-points. They looked like crooked 
white needles, each with a hole in the side below the 
point, from which oozed the yellow venom. Before 
the darting weasel had time to gain the shelter of the 
rock, both fangs had pierced his side, and the great 
snake was back again in coil. Tottering as the deadly 
virus touched the tide of his fierce blood, and knowing 
that his life was numbered by seconds, the weasel yet 
sprang forward to die at death-grips with his foe. 
As he came, the great snake struck again, but as it 
snapped back into coil, the needle-like teeth of the 
other met in its brain. The great reptile thrashed 
and rattled, but the grip of the red killer remained 
unbroken long after both were still and stark. 

Beyond the black circle of the woods, away from 
the fatal ledge and through the sunlight, the chip- 
munk sped, expecting every minute to hear the 
fierce patter of his pursuer close behind. Little by 
little he circled, until at last, hardly able to believe in 
his own escape, he found himself once more in the 
depths of his own burrow. 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 97 

As the spring lengthened into summer, Chippy 
found himself strangely interested in another burrow 
which had been dug near to his own. So, too, were 
half a dozen other gay young bucks of the colony, 
who, with tails erect and with sleek and well-groomed 
fur, frequently tried to visit the owner of said burrow. 
She treated them all alike. Every chipmunk who 
passed her front door received such a succession of 
nips and scratches that he was only too glad to back 
out again in a hurry. 

As time went by, with every new experience and 
with every new escape, Chippy grew larger and wiser 
and stronger. Then came the glittering summer 
afternoon when he won the right to rank with the 
bravest and best of the colony. The heat eddied 
across the hill in shimmering waves as he started home 
from where he had been foraging, his cheek-pockets 
full of samples for his storehouse. As he neared his 
front door by the stone wall he saw Death itself en- 
tering his little neighbor's burrow. Black, sinuous, 
terrible, a giant blacksnake over six feet in length 
had found its way from its den on the other side of 
the hill to the chipmunk colony. Its smooth scales 
showed an absolute black in the sunlight, and made a 
crisp, rustling noise as it streamed over the dry 
leaves and grass of the hillside. Except for that 
sound, there was silence. At times the great snake 
would stop and, raising its head two feet from the 
ground and swaying back and forth, would stare 
here and there with fixed lidless eyes while the white 
patch on its lower jaw gleamed in the sun, and its 



-> WILD FOLK 

long, black forked tongue played in and out like the 
rlieker :: 2. iLime. 

Suddenly the snake sh:: ir_:o Nippy's :::: 
Over a third of its length had disappeared from sight 
when Chippy showed a flash of that instantaneous, 
unreckoning courage which carries man or beast into 
the front ranks of his kind. P e r haps what he did was 
to save himself from future danger. Yet who can 
say that it was not a spark of the same divine fire 

:ch glows in the heart of man that made him risk 
his life for another ! As he saw the fatal head dis- 
appear down the burrow, with a lightning-like spring 
he leaped upon the disappearing body, casting out 
his cherished nuts from his cheeks in mid-air. 
Opening his wide-set jaws, he clamped them shut 
where the supple, flexible spine of the snake ridged 
the smooth skin. The back of a blacksnake is a mass 
of tough muscles, and its spine has the strength of a 
s : e e 1 s t: • r i:: g . Yet the tremendous jaw-muscles of the 
chipmunk drove the needle-pointed teeth deep into 
the twisted, over-lapping fibres. 

The black column stiffened like an iron bar. 

:.l h:> .vrs a gains! the sides of the hole, the 

chipmunk gi 1 ~ 7 1 1 esperately . S u i i e : ily the 

keen teeth grated, and then locked in the sinuous 

:e itself. As they met. the great body surged 
forward and dragged the chipmunk into the burr 
Once deep underground, there was danger that the 
snake might find space to double back on its length 
and gain a fatal head-hold with its sharp slanting 
Y:: Chippy never loosed his grip for an 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 99 

instant. Dragging back with all his strength, he 
forced his clamped teeth deeper and deeper into the 
twisting spine. At last through the cold, bubbling 
blood, he felt the fibres of the vertebrae slowly give, 
until with a final rending tug he bit clear through 
the spinal cord. 

By this time he was well below ground, and only 
the snake's tail thrashed and writhed ineffectually on 
the surface. Suddenly, as Chippy still gnawed and 
tugged, the lashings of the tail lessened, and through 
his clenched teeth he could feel something tugging 
and biting at it. Little by little the struggles of the 
snake became fainter, and Chippy no longer felt 
himself dragged forward. When at last they had 
died down to convulsive twists and shudders, which 
would last for hours, the battling chipmunk unlocked 
his jaws and backed out of the burrow. Bloody, 
bruised and exhausted he found himself once more 
safe in the sunlight. 

Bight in front of him was Nippy, worrying the 
wriggling tail with her sharp teeth like a little 
terrier. Aroused far underground by the sounds of 
the struggle she had rushed up toward the entrance. 
While still a long distance from it, her quick little 
ears caught the fierce hiss that the great snake gave 
at the first pang from the piercing teeth ; and though 
this was her first year alone in the world, she knew 
that the sound meant death. Turning like a flash, 
she slipped into a by-passage and escaped to the 
upper air by an emergency exit concealed under a 
huckleberry bush. At her front door she found the 



100 WILD FOLK 

tail of the crippled snake thrashing back and forth, 
and pouncing upon it, she helped her unseen ally : y 
biting through the spine in two places at its narrowest 
point. When Chippy appeared, she let go, and by 
degrees the writhing body disappeared from the sight 
of the sun. Then, while Chippy lay and panted, the 
little owner of the burrow began to seal up the 
entrance of the haunted home in token that it wa> 
hers no longer. The front door once shut and locked, 
she moved slowly toward the top of the hill and — 
looked back. 

Then was the time for Chippy to f oflow. Instead, 
he stiffly and haltingly betook himself to his own 
burrow. When, two days later, he came out, there 
was no trace of the fair and fleeting Nippy. For 
weeks he sought her e ezywhere, in the woods and 
pastures, and even to the shore of the little lake that 
cupped the farther side of the hill. 

Then came a happening which drove all thoughts 
of anything but life and death from the minds of all 
the dwellers on the hillside. The doom which ahv; ya 
hangs over the Little People fell upon them. In 
the gray hour just before the dawn, one fatal day, 
what looked like a brown squirrel, with a white 
throat and paws and a short tail, came to the chip- 
munk colony. Yet no squirrel ever had such blood- 
red eyes, such a serpent-like head, or a body so lithe 
and sinuous. The deadly visitor was none other than 
the lesser, or short-tailed weasel, far more dangerous 
to the Little People than his larger kinsman, since 
he was small enough to enter their burrc^ 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 101 

To-day he slipped like a shadow into the first 
burrow he found. It happened to be the very one 
of which the stranger chipmunk had dispossessed 
Chippy months before. This morning he had just 
waked up in his round sleeping-room when he heard 
the patter of the weasel down the long entrance 
tunnel. Out of one of his many exits the chipmunk 
dashed, but as he came above ground, the weasel was 
hard on his heels, and he turned to do battle for his 
life. As he was nearly as large as the weasel, the 
fight did not seem an unequal one ; yet the chipmunk 
never had a chance. For a second the two faced each 
other, the chipmunk crouched low, the weasel with 
its swaying head raised high. Then the chipmunk 
lunged forward, desperately hoping to gain a grip 
with its two keen gnawing teeth. With a curve of its 
supple body, the weasel slipped the other's lead, and 
with almost the same motion gave that fatal counter 
which no animal has yet learned to parry. With a 
snap of the triangular muzzle, three of the long 
fighting teeth of the killer pierced with diabolical 
accuracy the chipmunk's skull at the exact point 
where it was thinnest, and crashed deep into its brain. 

Stopping only to lap a little of the warm blood of 
its victim, the weasel flashed into the next burrow, 
where a mother chipmunk slept with her five babies, 
all rolled up in a round warm ball. To them all, 
death came mercifully swift. Then into the next 
burrow and the next this Death-in-the-dark hastened. 
None of the Little People he met escaped. Some 
fought, others fled, but neither courage nor fleetness 



102 WILD FOLK 

availed. When, at last, the brown killer approached 
the burrow where Chippy lived, it had left behind it 
a trail of nearly a score of dead and dying victims, 
and yet was as tireless and terrible as ever. Each 
time that it slaked its vamp ire- thirst with fresh blood, 
it seemed to gain new strength and speed. 

As the sun showed over Prindle Hill, Chippy 
started out of his front door. Even as he thrust his 
head into the open, he caught the sound of a faint 
squeal from a near-by burrow and saw the blood- 
stained muzzle of the weasel show in the early sun- 
light. As he dived back, his instantaneous brain 
seized upon the one way of escape remaining. The 
weasel could outrun him, and with his unerring nose 
unravel any tangle of tunnels. Yet the underground 
people have one last resource of their own, which 
a million years of being hunted to the death have 
taught them. To make use of this defense, however, 
the pursued must have a substantial start over the 
hunter, and to-day Chippy had but a few scant 
seconds, since the weasel had glimpsed the whisk of 
his tail as he plunged headlong down his front en- 
trance, and had instantly started for his burrow. 

With back humped high at every pattering plunge 
of its short legs, the weasel looked like a great inch- 
worm measuring its way toward its prey. Yet, 
clumsy as its gait appeared, it was scarcely an 
instant before the bloody muzzle and red glaring eyes 
were thrust into the hole down which the chipmunk 
had disappeared. Much can be done, however, even 
in seconds, with a hair-trigger brain and nerves and 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 103 

muscles tensed by the fear of death. Like a flash, 
Chippy traversed the main passage of his burrow, 
dashed into a tunnel that forked off to the right, and 
then dived into a smaller branch, which angled off 
sharply from the larger tube. Then he suddenly 
doubled on his tracks, and popped into another 
passage, which ran in a long slant up to within a few 
inches of the surface of the hillside. 

Once beyond the entrance to this last tunnel, the 
chipmunk dug for his very life's sake. With flashing 
strokes of his forepaws, he dislodged the soft earth 
at the sides of the passage, sweeping it back with his 
hind feet; and, even as the weasel writhed his way 
along the main passage, Chippy had sealed the door- 
way to the last tube which he had entered, so care- 
fully that the blocked entrance could not be told from 
the rest of the surface of the passage-wall. Then he 
hurried swiftly and silently toward the surface. 

Even as he dug his way up through the tough 
grass-roots, his fierce pursuer flashed into the tube 
from which the walled-up doorway led. With nose 
close to the ground, the weasel had followed the chip- 
munk's trail at full speed, nor had the branching and 
intersecting passages slowed his speed even for a 
moment. Only when he came to the spot where the 
chipmunk had doubled back to the sealed-up door- 
way, was he checked. Even his keen nostrils could 
not follow the trail through four inches of fresh earth. 

As he came to a standstill, his microphonic ears 
caught the sound of distant digging far above him. 
Instantly, without wasting any time in hunting for 



104 WILD FOLK 

the sealed tunnel, he turned and raced back to the en- 
trance-hole, with such speed that, just as the chip- 
munk pushed his way to the surface well up the hill- 
side, the weasel burst out of the main entrance below 
and dashed after him. 

If the weasel's speed had not been slowed by 
slaughter, the chase would have been a short one. 
As it was, the chipmunk went over the crest of the hill 
a few rods ahead; but the gap lessened as his 
pursuer struck his gait and shot forward like an un- 
coiling spring. This time it seemed as if the chip- 
munk's last chance for life were gone. Above 
ground he was out-paced. To go underground again 
meant certain death. A miracle had saved him before 
from the other weasel — but nature seldom deals in 
miracles twice. Yet the little animal never weak- 
ened. A rabbit so close to death would have quit 
and cowered down, crying piteously until the weasel's 
teeth were in its throat. A rat would have lost its 
head and, running itself to a standstill, met its death 
frothing and squealing in mortal terror. 

Chippy, however, concealed under his gentle, 
sprightly exterior a cool little brain, nor did ever a 
braver heart beat than throbbed under his white 
waistcoat. Although he seemed to be running at 
full speed, he was really holding something in re- 
serve and already his flash-like mind had seized upon 
the one chance of life that was left. Earth and air 
had betrayed him. Perhaps water would be kinder. 
Straight toward the little lake he headed. Little by 
little the space between him and the killer behind 



THE LITTLE PEOPLE 105 

lessened. By the time he had reached the roots of 
a black willow tree which stretched far out over the 
water, the snake-head of the weasel was not six feet 
behind the fluffy tail which Chippy still flaunted, the 
unlowered banner of his courage. Out upon the tree 
trunk he rushed, until he reached the farthest fork. 
Then, gathering himself together, he sprang from all 
four feet as if driven by a released spring and struck 
far out in the still water. 

The sound of his splash had hardly died away be- 
fore his brown pursuer launched himself into the air 
with a sort of double jump, starting with a spring 
from his short forelegs and ending with a tremendous 
drive from his squat hind legs. In spite of this 
clumsy take-off, the fierce force that shows in every- 
thing a weasel does, drove him a foot ahead of the 
chipmunk's mark. Followed a desperate race. 
Swimming high with jerky, uneven, rapid strokes, 
the weasel rushed through the water and foot by foot 
cut down the chipmunk's lead, until his teeth gnashed 
a scant yard back of the other's shoulder. There 
however the weasel hung. Swimming deeper, and 
with slower and more powerful strokes, the chip- 
munk refused to break his stroke by looking back. 
Only when the recurring ripples warned him that 
his pursuer was closing in on him did he put more 
power into the deep, regular beat of his strong little 
legs. 

Slowly, very slowly, the better stroke began to 
tell. At first the weasel only stopped gaining. 
Then, little by little, the gap between the two 



106 WILD FOLK 

widened. When it had stretched out to ten feet, the 
chipmunk shot ahead as if the other were anchored. 
The weasel's strokes became slower, and at last 
stopped. Flesh and blood, however fierce, has its 
limitations. The weasel had risked everything on 
his first desperate sprint. That failing, his reserves 
were gone, and he turned and slowly and pantingly 
swam back to the shore and passed out of Chippy's 
life forever. 

Strongly and steadily the chipmunk swam on, 
until the farther shore, a quarter of a mile away, was 
reached. Wearily Chippy dragged himself up the 
beach to the dry hillside, staggering from exhaustion. 
There was no stone wall near, nor had he the strength 
to dig even the beginning of a burrow. Unpro- 
tected, in the open, he must take his chances until 
his strength came back. Then it was that nature 
relented, and once more another miracle was wrought 
for one of her loved Little People. Out of a hole 
on the hillside half -hidden by the pink blossoms of a 
steeple-bush, popped a small head, and for a golden 
moment Chippy gazed long and long into the eyes 
of Xippy. Then she turned back into her burrow, 
with a look that drew him totteringly after her. At 
the Hood-tide of their lives they had met to become the 
founders of another colony, and to pass on imdimmed 
the divine spark of courage and endurance and love. 



VI 
THE PATH OF THE AIR 

Deacon Jimmy Wadsworth was probably the 
most upright man in Cornwall. It was he who drove 
five miles one bitter winter night and woke up Silas 
Smith, who kept the store at Cornwall Bridge, to 
give him back three cents over-change. Silas's 
language, as he went back to bed, almost brought on 
a thaw. 

The Deacon lived on the tiptop of the Cobble, one 
of the twenty-seven named hills of Cornwall, with 
Aunt Maria his wife, Hen Root his hired man, Nip 
Root his yellow dog and — the Ducks. The Deacon 
had rumpled white hair and a serene clear-cut face, 
and even when working, always wore a clean white 
shirt with a stiff bosom and no collar. 

Aunt Maria was of the salt of the earth. She 
was spry and short, with a little face all wrinkled 
with good-will and good works, and had twinkling 
eyes of horizon-blue. If anyone was sick, or had 
unexpected company, or a baby, or was getting 
married or buried, Aunt Maria was always on hand, 
helping. 

As for Hen, he cared more for his dog than he did 
for any human. When a drive for the Liberty Loan 
was started in Cornwall, he bought a bond for himself 

107 



108 WILD FOLK 

and one for Nip., and had the latter wear a Liberty 
Loan button in his collar. 

Of course, the farm was cluttered up with horses, 
cows, chickens, and similar bric-a-brac, but the Ducks 
were part of the household. It came about this way: 
Rashe Howe., who hunted everything except work, 
had given the Deacon a tamed decoy duck, who 
seemed to have passed her usefulness as a lure. It 
was evident, however, that she had been trifling with 
Rashe. for before she had been on the farm a month, 
somewhere in sky or stream she found a mate. 
Later, down by the ice-pond, she stole a nest — a 
beautiful basin made of leaves and edged with soft 
down from her black-and-buff breast. There she laid 
ten blunt-ended, brown eggs, which she brooded until 
she was carried off one night bv a wandering fox. 
Her mate went back to the wilds, and Aunt Maria 
put the eggs under a big clucking Brahma hen. who 
hatched out six soft yellow ducklings. 

They had no more than come out of the shell when, 
with faint little quackings. they paddled out of the 
barnyard and started in single file for the pond. 
Although just hatched, each little duck knew its 
place in the line, and from that day on, the order 
never changed. The old hen. clucking frantically, 
tried again and again to turn them back. Each time 
they scattered and. waddling past her. fell into line 
once more. When at last they reached the bank, 
their foster-mother scurried back and forth squawk- 
ing warnings at the top of her voice: but. one after 
another, each disobedient duckling plunged in with 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 109 

a bob of its turned-up tail, and the procession swam 
around and around the pond as if it would never stop. 

This was too much for the old hen. She stood for 
a long minute, watching the ungrateful brood, and 
then turned away and evidently disinherited them 
upon the spot. From that moment she gave up the 
duties of motherhood, stopped setting and clucking, 
and never again recognized her foster-children, as 
they found out to their sorrow after their swim. All 
the rest of that day they plopped sadly after her, 
only to be received with pecks whenever they came 
too near. She would neither feed nor brood them, 
and when night came, they had to huddle in their 
deserted coop in a soft little heap, shivering and 
quacking beseechingly until daylight. 

The next day Aunt Maria was moved by the sight 
of the six, weary but still pursuing the indifferent 
hen, keeping up the while a chorus of soft sorrowful 
little quackings, which ought to have touched her 
heart — but did n't. By this time they were so weak 
that, if Aunt Maria had not taken them into the 
kitchen and fed them and covered them up in a basket 
of flannel, they would never have lived through the 
second night. 

Thereafter the old kitchen became a nursery. Six 
human babies could hardly have called for more 
attention, or have made more trouble, or have been 
better loved than those six fuzzy, soft, yellow duck- 
lings. In a few days, the whole home-life on top of 
the Cobble centred around them. They needed so 
much nursing and petting and soothing, that it 



110 WILD FOLK 

almost seemed to Aunt Maria as if a half -century 
had rolled back, and she was once more looking 
after babies long, long lost to her. Even old Hen be- 
came attached to them enough to cuff Xip violently 
when that pampered animal growled at the new- 
comers, and showed signs of abolishing them. From 
that moment Xip joined the Brahma hen in ignoring 
the ducklings completely. If any attention was 
shown them in his presence, he would stalk away 
majestically, as if overcome with astonishment that 
humans would spend their time over six yellow ducks 
instead of one yellow dog. 

During the ducks' first days in the kitchen, some- 
one had to be with them constantly. Otherwise all 
six of them would go c: Yip, yip, yip," at the top of 
their voices. As soon as anv one came to their 
cradle, or even spoke to them, they would snuggle 
down contentedly under the flannel, and sing like a 
lot of little tea-kettles, making the same kind of a 
sleepy hum that a flock of wild mallards gives when 
they are sleeping far out on the water. They liked 
the Deacon and Hen, but thev loved Aunt Maria. 
In a few davs thev followed her everywhere around 

mm •/ 

the house, and even out on the farm, paddling along 
just behind her, in single file, and quacking vigor- 
ously if she walked too fast. 

One day she tried to slip out and go down to the 
sewing-circle at Mrs. Miner Rogers's at the foot of 
the hill; but they were on her trail before she had 
taken ten steps. They followed her all the way 
down, and stood with their beaks pressed against 



THE PATH OF THE AIR ill 

the bay-window, watching her as she sat in Mrs. 
Rogers's parlor. When they made up their minds 
that she had called long enough, they set up such a 
chorus of quackings that Aunt Maria had to come. 

' Those pesky ducks will quack their heads off if 
I don't leave," she explained shamefacedly. 

The road up-hill was a long, long trail for the 
ducklings. Every now and then they would stop and 
cry with their pathetic little yipping note, and lie 
down flat on their backs, and hold their soft little 
paddles straight up in the air, to show how sore they 
were. The last half of the journey they made in 
Aunt Maria's apron, singing away contentedly as she 
plodded up the hill. 

As they grew older, they took an interest in 
everyone who came; and if they did not approve of 
the visitor, would quack deafeningly until he went. 
Once Aunt Maria happened to step suddenly around 
the corner of the house as a load of hay went past. 
Finding her gone, the ducks started solemnly down 
the road, following the hay-wagon, evidently con- 
vinced that she was hidden somewhere beneath the 
load. They were almost out of sight when Aunt 
Maria called to them. At the first sound of her 
voice, they turned and hurried back, flapping their 
wings and paddling with all their might, quacking 
joyously as they came. 

Aunt Maria and the flock had various little 
private games of their own. Whenever she sat down, 
they would tug at the neatly tied bows of her shoe- 
laces, until they had loosened them; whereupon she 




112 WILD FOLK 

would jump up and rush at them, pretending great 
wrath; whereupon they would scatter on all sides, 
quacking' dehghtedlv. When she turned back, thev 
would form a circle around her, snuggling their soft 
necks against her gown until she scratched each up- 
lifted head softly. If she wore button- shoes they 
would pry away at the loose buttons and attempt to 
swallow them. When she w i s w : dring in her flower- 
garden, they would bother her by swallowing some of 
the smallest bulbs, and snatching up and running away 
with larger ones. At other times they would hide in 
dark corners and rush out at her with loud and terri- 
fying quacks, at which Aunt Martha would pretend 
to be much frightened and scuttle away, pursued by 
the six. 

AD three of the family were forever gTumbling 
about the flock. To hear them, one would suppose 
that their whole lives were embitter e :: by the trouble 
and expense of caring for a lot of useless, greedy 
duck-. Yet when Hen suggested roast duck for 
Thanksgiving. Deacon Jimmy and Aunt Maria lec- 
tured him so severely for his cruelty, that he was glad 
to explain that he was only joking. Once, when the 
ducks were sick, he ducr angleworms for them all one 
winter afternoon, in the corner of the pigpen where 
the ground stfll remained unfrozen: and Deacon 
Jimmy nearly bankrupted himself buying pickled 
yysters, which he fed them as a tonic. 

It was not long before they outgrew their baby 
clothes, m re the mottled brown of the mallard 

duck, with a dark steel-blue bar edged with white on 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 113 

either wing. The leader evidently had a strain of 
black duck in her blood. She was larger, and lacked 
the trim bearing of the aristocratic mallard. On the 
other hand, Blackie had all the wariness and sagacity 
of the black duck, than whom there is no wiser bird. 
As the winter came on, a coop was fixed up for them 
not far from the kitchen, where they slept on warm 
straw in the coldest weather, with their heads tucked 
under their soft, down-lined wings up to their round, 
bright eyes. The first November snowstorm covered 
their coop out of sight ; but when Aunt Maria called, 
they quacked a cheery answer back from under the 
drift. 

Then came the drake, a gorgeous mallard with a 
head of emerald-green and a snow-white collar, and 
with black, white, gray, and violet wings, in all the 
pride and beauty of his prime. A few days and 
nights before he had been a part of the North. Be- 
yond the haunts of men, beyond the farthest forests, 
where the sullen green of the pines gleamed against 
a silver sky, a great waste-land stretched clear to the 
tundras, beyond which is the ice of the Arctic. In this 
wilderness, where long leagues of rushes hissed and 
whispered to the wind, the drake had dwelt. Here 
and there were pools of green-gray water, and beyond 
the rushes stretched the bleached brown reeds, deep- 
ening in the distance to a dark tan. In the summer a 
heavy, sweet scent had hung over the marshland, like 
the breath of a herd of sleeping cattle. Here had lived 
uncounted multitudes of waterfowl. 

As the summer passed, a bitter wind howled like a 



114 WILD FOLK 

wolf from the North with the hiss of snow in its wings. 
Sometimes by day, when little flurries of snow whirled 
over the waving rushes; sometimes by night, when a 
misty moon struggled through a gray wrack of cloud, 
long lines and crowded masses of water-birds sprang 
into the air, and started on the far journey southward. 
There were gaggles of wild geese flying in long 
wedges, with the strongest and the wisest gander lead- 
ing the converging lines; wisps of snipe, and bad- 
lings of duck of many kinds. The widgeons flew with 
whistling wings, in long black streamers. The scaup 
came down the sky in dark masses, giving a rippling 
purr as they flew. Here and there scattered couples 
of blue- winged teal shot past groups of the slower 
ducks. Then down the sky, in a whizzing parallel- 
ogram, came a band of canvasbacks, with long red 
heads and necks and gray-white backs. Moving at 
the rate of a hundred and sixtv feet a second, they 
passed pintails, black duck, and mergansers as if 
they had been anchored, grunting as they flew. 

When the rest of his folk sprang into the air, the 
mallard drake had refused to leave the cold pools and 
the whispering rushes. Late that season he had lost 
his mate, and, lonely without her and hoping still for 
her return, he lingered among the last to leave. As the 
nights went by, the marshes became more and more 
deserted. Then there dawned a cold, turquoise day. 
The winding streams showed sheets of sapphire and 
pools of molten silver. That afternoon the sun, a 
vast globe of molten red, sank through an old-rose 
sky, which slowly changed to a faint golden green. 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 115 

For a moment it hung on the knife-edge of the world, 
and then dipped down and was gone. 

Through the violet twilight five gleaming, misty- 
white birds of an unearthly beauty, glorious trum- 
peter swans, flew across the western sky in strong, 
swift, majestic flight. As the shadows darkened like 
spilt ink, their clanging notes came down to the lonely 
drake. When the swans start south, it is no time for 
lesser folk to linger. The night was aflame with its 
million candles as he sprang into the air, circled once 
and again, and followed southward the moon path 
which lay like a long streamer of gold across the 
waste-lands. Night and day and day and night and 
night and day again he flew, until, as he passed over 
the northwestern corner of Connecticut, that strange 
food sense which a migrating bird has, brought him 
down from the upper sky into the one stretch of 
marshland that showed for miles around. It chanced 
to be close to the base of the Cobble. 

All night long he fed full among the pools. Just 
as the first faint light showed in the eastern sky, he 
climbed upon the top of an old muskrat house that 
showed above the reeds. At the first step, there was 
a sharp click, the fierce grip of steel, and he was fast 
in one of Hen's traps. There the old man found him 
at sunrise, and brought him home wrapped up in his 
coat, quacking, flapping, and fighting every foot of 
the way. An examination showed his leg to be un- 
broken, and Hen held him while Aunt Maria with a 
pair of long shears clipped his beautiful wings. Then, 
all gleaming green and violet, he was set down among 



116 WILD FOLK 

the six ducks, who had been watching him admiringly. 

The second he was loosed, he gave his strong wings 
a flap that should have lifted him high above the hate- 
ful earth, where tame folk set traps for wild folk. 
Instead of swooping toward the clouds, the clipped 
wings beat the air impotently, and did not even raise 
his orange, webbed feet from the ground. Again and 
again the drake tried to fly, only to realize at last that 
he was clipped and shamed and earthbound. Then 
for the first time he seemed to notice the six who 
stood by, watching him in silence. To them he 
quacked, and quacked, and quacked fiercely, and 
Aunt Maria had an uneasy feeling that she and her 
shears were the subject of his remarks. Suddenly he 
stopped, and all seven started toward their winter 
quarters; and lo and behold! at the head of the pro- 
cession marched the gleaming drake, with the de- 
posed Blackie trailing meekly in second place. 

From that day forth he was their leader; nor did 
he forget his wrongs. The sight of Aunt Maria was 
always a signal for a burst of impassioned quackings. 
Soon it became evident that the ducks were reluc- 
tantly convinced that the gentle little woman had been 
guilty of a great crime, and more and more they be- 
gan to shun her. There were no more games and 
walks and caressings. Instead the six followed the 
drake's lead in avoiding as far as possible humans who 
trapped and clipped the people of the air. 

At first the Deacon put the whole flock in a great 
pen where the young calves were kept in spring, 
fearing lest the drake might wander away. This, 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 117 

of course, was no imprisonment to the ducks, who 
could fly over the highest fence. The first morning, 
after they had been penned, the ducks sprang over 
the fence and started for the pond, quacking to the 
drake to follow. When he quacked back that he 
could not, the flock returned and showed him again 
and again how easy it was to fly over the fence. At 
last he evidently made them understand that for him 
flying was impossible. Several times they started 
for the pond, but each time at a quack from the drake 
they came back. It was Blackie who finally solved 
the difficulty. Flying back over the fence, she found 
a place where a box stood near one of the sides of the 
pen. Climbing up on top of this, she fluttered to the 
top rail. The drake clambered up on the box, and 
tried to follow. As he was scrambling up the fence, 
with desperate flappings of his disabled wings, 
Blackie and the others, who had joined her on the 
top rail, reached down and pulled him upward with 
tremendous tugs from their flat bills, until he finally 
scrambled to the top and was safely over. For sev- 
eral days this went on, and the flock would help him 
out of and into the pen every day, as they went to and 
from the pond. When at last Aunt Maria saw this 
experiment in prison-breaking, she threw open the 
gate wide, and thereafter the drake had the freedom 
of the farm with the others. As the days went by, he 
seemed to become more reconciled to his fate and at 
times would even take food from Aunt Maria's hand ; 
yet certain reserves and withdrawings on the part of 
the whole flock were always apparent, to vex her. 



118 WILD FOLK 

At last and at last, just when it seemed as if winter 
would never go, spring came. There were flocks of 
wild geese beating, beating, beating up the sky, never 
soaring, never resting, thrusting their way north in a 
great black-and-white wedge, outflying spring, and 
often rinding lakes and marshes still locked against 
them. Then came the strange, wild call from the sky 
of the killdeer, who wears two black rings around his 
white breast; and the air was full of robin notes and 
bluebird calls and the shrill high notes of the hylas. 
On the sides of the Cobble the bloodroot bloomed, with 
its snowy petals and heart of gold and root dripping 
with burning, bitter blood — frail flowers which the 
wind kisses and kills. Then the beech trees turned 
all lavender-brown and silver, and the fields of April 
wheat made patches of brilliant velvet green. 

At last there came a day blurred with glory, when 
the grass was a green blaze, and the woods dripped 
green, and the new leaves of the apple trees were 
like tiny jets of green flame among the pink and white 
blossoms. The sky was full of waterfowl going 
north. All that day the drake had been uneasy. One 
by one he had moulted his clipped wing-feathers, and 
the long curved quills which had been his glory had 
come back again. Late in the afternoon, as he was 
leading his flock toward the kitchen, a great hubbub 
of calls and cries floated down from the afternoon 
sky. The whole upper air was black with ducks. 
There were teal, wood-ducks, baldpates, black duck, 
pintails, little bluebills, whistlers, and suddenly a 
great mass of mallards, the green heads of the drakes 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 119 

gleaming against the sky. As they flew they quacked 
down to the little earthbound group below. 

Suddenly the great drake seemed to realize that his 
power was upon him once more. With a great sweep 
of his lustrous wings, he launched himself forth into 
the air in a long arrowy curve, and shot up through 
the sky toward the disappearing company — and not 
alone. Even as he left the ground, before Aunt 
Maria's astonished eyes, faithful, clumsy, wary 
Blackie sprang into the air after him, and with the 
strong awkward flight of the black duck, which 
ploughs its way through the air by main strength, she 
overtook her leader, and the two were lost in the 
distant sky. 

Aunt Maria took what comfort she could out of the 
five who remained, but only now that they had gone, 
did she realize how dear to her was Greentop, the 
beautiful, wild, resentful drake, and Blackie, awk- 
ward, wise, resourceful Blackie. The flock too was 
lost without them, and took chances and overlooked 
dangers which they never would have been allowed 
to do under the reign of their lost king and queen. 
At last fate overtook them one dark night when they 
were sleeping out. That vampire of the darkness, a 
wandering mink, came upon them. With their pass- 
ing went something of love and hope, which left the 
Cobble a very lonely place for the three old people. 

As the nights grew longer, Aunt Maria would often 
dream that she heard the happy little flock singing 
like teakettles in their basket, or that she heard them 
quack from their coop, and would call out to comfort 



120 WILD FOLK 

thez:. Ye: s>:ys i: ^:s :::> : ire-:. The- :he 
::.:: eaire. .:::: :::e nigh: : rre:: s::r:u ■:: si::" ni 
s.ee: ::::^e :Ter the L :::::.e. ::::: ::;e ^rni h:~Ied as 
it did :he u:rh: ::r:::r :he i::^e w^s :;uui. Sud- 

listene::. When she ^\:s sizt she ":s :::: izzimins. 

v he ::~.:ke-ei the De:::u a.i:i th:::;^h the iirkuess 

'----'' hurried i:~ u :: :he d:-:r. fzuuu :he ::her si he ;: 

:::: senuied tumuitt; : us -mi ::u:ik;: : uiekirurs. 



I: -±s he^hei ::v G: 



iguinst Ann: Miria's :ren:hliug knees. ~::h the littie 
mtessiug. uxuiug mise ~ii::h Bii:kie :>u"s :::::e 
~her_ she ~.::::e.i :: he petted, Ba:k :: her. : :: :ku:g 
ezutiirrissediT. ~:. .:die;i ::.:: :u:re ituks ~h: sheared 
their y;u:h hv their sue :tui :he ::e~^uess :: their 
feathering. Greer.::: and Bi::k:e h.:i :v:ue h::k, 
bringing :heir :; .:i::_~ ^::h t:;em. 

The uuuui: ::::: :he sh:utiug areuse-d :ld He::. 
~h: Lurried i:^n in Lis ni^h: :i::::es. These, ::t :he 
~;~. ~e:e :he suiue :s u:s :::." :i::::es ex:e::: f:r ti:e 



^ - 

su: ::. ^iuiuug harruiv. 

Th::'s whit it he." re-:::::::;: D:::::: J 
1 : . :. ~. - t :. . •■• •■ ~ ±i i. j. • c . . :: . :.: . r :.. . > : r . . > r . 



THE PATH OF THE AIR 121 

" Yes, it's them good-for-nothin' — " began Aunt 
Maria; but she gulped and something warm and wet 
trickled down her wrinkled cheeks, as she stopped and 
pulled two dear-loved heads, one green and the other 
black, into her arms. 



VII 
BLACKCAT 

Above the afterglow gleamed a patch of beryl- 
green. Etched against the color was the faintest, 
finest,, and newest of crescent moons. It seemed al- 
most as if a puff of wind would blow it, like a cob- 
web, out of the sky. As the shifting tints deepened 
into the unvarying peacock-blue of a Northern night, 
the evening star flared like a lamp hung low in the 
west while the dark strode across the shadows of the 
forest, cobalt-blue against the drifted snow. As the 
winter stars flamed into the darkening sky, a tide of 
night-life flowed and throbbed under the silent trees. 
One by one the wild folk came forth, to live and love 
and die in this their day, even as we humans in ours. 

Long after the twilight had dimmed into the jew- 
eled darkness, opalescent with the changing colors 
of the Northern Lights, from the inner depths of the 
woods there came a threat to the lif e of nearly every- 
one of the forest folk. Yet it seemed but the mourn- 
ful wail of a little child. Only to the moose, the black- 
bear and the wolverine was it other than the very 
voice of Death. 

Fifty feet above the ground, from a blasted 
and hollow white pine, the plaintive sound again 

122 



BLACKCAT 123 

shuddered down the wind. From a hollow under an 
overhanging bough, a brownish-black animal moved 
slowly down the tree trunk, headfirst, which position 
marked him as a past-master among the tree folk. 
Only those climbers who are absolutely at home aloft 
go forward down a perpendicular tree trunk. As the 
beast came out of the shadow it resembled nothing so 
much as a big black cat, with a bushy tail and a round, 
grayish head. Because of this appearance the trap- 
pers had named it the blackcat. Others call it the 
fisher, although it never fishes, while to the Indians it 
is the pekan — the killer-in-the-dark. In spite of its 
rounded head and mild doggy face, the fisher belongs 
to those killers, the weasels. Next to the wolverine, 
he is the most powerful of his family, and he is far 
and away the most versatile. 

To-night, on reaching the ground, the pekan fol- 
lowed one of the many runways he had discovered 
in the ten-mile beat that formed his hunting- 
ground. Like most of the weasels, he lived alone. 
His brief and dangerous family life lasted but a few 
days in the fall of every year. When his mate tried 
to kill him unawares, the blackcat knew that his honey- 
moon was over, and departed again to his hollow tree, 
many miles from Mrs. Blackcat. To-night, as he 
moved at a leisurely pace across the snow, in a series 
of easy bounds, his lithe black body looped itself along 
like a hunting snake, while his broad forehead gave 
him an innocent, open look. If in the tree he had 
resembled a cat, on the ground he looked more like 
a dog. 



124 WILD FOLK 

There was one animal who was not misled bv the 
frank openness of the fisher's face. That one was a 
hunting pine marten, who had just come across a 
red squirrel's nest made of woven sticks thatched with 
leaves,, and set in the fork of a moose-wood sapling 
some thirty feet from the ground. Cocking his head 
on one side, the marten regarded the swaying nest 
critically out of his bright black eyes. Convinced 
that it was occupied, with a dart he dashed up the 
slender trunk, which bent and shook under his rush. 

But Chickaree had craftily chosen a tree that would 
bend under the lightest weight, and signal the ap- 
proach of any unwelcome visitor., Before the marten 
had covered half the distance, four squirrels boiled out 
of the nest and, darting to the end of the farthest 
twigs, leaped to the nearest trees and scurried off into 
the darkness. The marten had poised himself for a 
spring when he saw the fisher gazing up at him. 
Straightway he forgot that there were squirrels in 
the world. With a tremendous spring, he landed on 
the trunk of a near-by hemlock and slipped around 
it like a shadow. 

It was too late. With a couple of effortless bounds, 
the blackcat reached the trunk and slipped up it with 
the ease and speed of a blacksnake. The marten 
doubled and twisted and turned on his trail, and 

launched himself surelv and swiftlv from dizzv 

» » » 

heights at arrowy speed. Yet, spring and dash as he 
would, there was always a pattering rush just be- 
hind him. Before the branches, which crackled and 
bent under the lithe golden-brown body, had stopped 



BLACKCAT 125 

waving, they would crash and sag under the black 
weight of the fisher. With every easy bound the 
black came nearer to the gold. The pine marten is 
the swiftest tree-climber in the world, bar one. The 
blackcat is that one. As the two great weasels flashed 
through the trees, they seemed to be running tandem. 
Every twist and turn of the golden leader was fol- 
lowed automatically by the black wheeler, as if the 
two were connected by an invisible, but unbreakable 
bond. 

Under the strain it was the nerves of the marten 
which gave way first. Not that he stopped, and cow- 
ered, helpless and shaking, like the rabbit-folk, nor 
ran frothing and amuck as do rat-kind when too 
hardly pressed. No weasel, while he lives, ever loses 
his head completely. Only now the marten ran more 
and more wildly, relying on straight speed and over- 
looking many a chance for a puzzling double, which 
would have given him a breathing-space. The im- 
perturbable blackcat noted this, and began to take 
short cuts, which might have lost him his prey at the 
beginning of the hunt. 

At last, the long and circling chase brought them 
both near an enormous white pine, which towered 
some forty feet away from the nearest tree. A bent 
spruce leaned out toward the lone pine. With a 
flying leap, the marten reached the spruce and flashed 
up the trunk, with never a look behind. His crafty 
pursuer saw his chance. Landing in a lower crotch 
of the spruce, with a flying take-off he launched him- 
self outward and downward into mid-air, with every 



126 WILD FOLK 

ounce and atom of spring that his steel-wire muscles 
held. It seemed impossible that anything without 
wings could cover the great gap between the two 
trees ; but the blackcat knew to an inch what he could 
do, and almost to an inch did the distance tax his 
powers. In a wide parabola his black body whizzed 
through the air half a hundred feet above the ground, 
beginning as a round ball of fur, which stretched 
out until the fisher hung full length at the crest of 
his spring. If the tree had been a scant six inches 
farther awav, the blackcat would never have made it. 
As it was, the huge clutching, horn-colored claws of 
his forepaws just caught, and held long enough to 
allow him to clamp down his hold with his hind paws. 

The marten, who had started fifty feet ahead of the 
blackcat and had lost his distance by having to climb 
up, jump, and then climb down, passed along the 
trunk of the pine on his way to the ground just as the 
blackcat landed, his lead cut down to a scant ten feet. 
Without a pause, the pekan deliberately sprang out 
into the air and disappeared in a snow bank full 
forty feet below. Not many animals, even with a 
snow buffer, could stand a drop of that distance, but 
the great black weasel burst out of the snow, his 
steel-bound frame apparently un jarred, and stood 
at the foot of the tree. 

As the marten reached the ground and saw what 
was awaiting him, his playful face seemed to turn into 
a mask of rage and despair. The round black eyes 
flamed red, the lips curved back from the sharp teeth 
in a horrible grin, and with a shrieking snarl and a 



BLACKCAT 127 

lightning-like snap he tried for the favorite throat- 
hold of the weasel-folk. He was battling, however, 
with one quite as quick and immeasurably more 
powerful. With a little bob the blackcat slipped the 
lead of his adversary, and the flashing teeth of the 
marten closed only on the loose tough skin of the 
fisher's shoulder. Before he could strike again the 
blackcat had the smaller animal clutched in its fierce 
claws, with no play to parry the counter- thrust of the 
black muzzle. In another second, the golden throat 
was dabbled with blood, which the fisher drank in 
great gulps like the weasel that he was. According 
to human notions, the dreadful and uncanny part of 
the contest was that, throughout the whole fight and 
the blood-stained finish, the blackcat's face was the 
mild, reflective, round face of a gentle dog. 

His first blood-thirst slaked, the fisher slung the 
limp body of the marten over his shoulder with a 
single flirt of his black head, and winding his way up 
the tree trunk, cached it for a time in a convenient 
crotch, feeling sure that no prowler would meddle 
with a prey which bore upon its pelt the scent and 
seal of the blackcat. 

All through a two-day snowstorm, the fisher had 
kept to his tree, and his first kill that night only 
sharpened the blood-lust which swept raging through 
his tense body. Following the nearest runway, he 
came to the shore of a wide, rapid, little forest river, 
which at this point had a fall which insured current 
enough to keep it from freezing. Near its bank, the 
ranging blackcat came upon a fresh track in the 



128 WILD FOLK 

soft snow. First there were five marks — one small, 
two large, and two small. The next track showed only 
four marks with the order reversed, the larger marks 
being in front, instead of behind the smaller. A 
little way farther on, and the smaller marks, instead 
of being side by side, showed one behind the other. 

The blackcat read this snow-riddle at a glance. 
The five marks showed where a northern hare, or 
snowshoe rabbit, had been sitting; the fifth mark be- 
ing where its bobbed tail had touched the snow. The 
larger marks had been the marks of the fur snowshoes, 
which it wears in winter on its big hopping hind-legs, 
and the smaller the mark of the little forepaws which, 
when he was sitting, naturally touched the ground in 
front of the hind paws. When the hare hopped the 
position was reversed, as the big hind paws, with 
every hop, struck the ground in front of the others, 
the hare traveling in the direction of the larger marks. 
The last tracks showed that the hare had either scented 
or seen its pursuer ; for a hare's eyes are so placed that 
it can see either forward or backward as it hops. As 
the little forelegs touched the ground, they were 
twisted one behind the other so as to secure the great- 
est leverage possible. 

The blackcat settled doggedly down to the chase. 
Although far slower in a straightaway run than either 
the hare or the fox, it can and will run down either 
in a long chase, although it may take a day to do it. 
To-night the chase came to a sudden and unexpected 
end. The hare described a great circle nearly half a 
mile in diameter, at full speed, and then, whiter than 



BLACKCAT 129 

the snow itself, squatted down to watch his back trail 
and determine whether his pursuer was really intend- 
ing to follow him to a finish. Before long, the squat- 
ting hare saw a black form on the other side of the 
circle, with humped back looping its way along. At 
such a sight the smaller cottontail rabbit would have 
run a short distance, and would then have crouched 
in the snow, squealing in fear of its approaching death. 
The hare is made of sterner stuff. Moreover, this 
one was a patriarch fully seven years old — a great 
age for any hare to have accomplished in a world full 
of foes. 

Wabasso, as Hiawatha named him, had not at- 
tained to this length of years without encountering 
blackcats. In some unknown way, probably by a 
happy accident, he had learned the one defense which 
a hare may interpose to the attack of a fisher, and live. 
Reaching full speed almost immediately, he cleared 
the snow in ten-foot bounds, four to the second, while 
the wide, hairy snowshoes, which nature fits to his 
white feet every winter, kept him from sinking much 
below the surface. 

The keen eyes of the blackcat caught sight of the 
hare's first bound in spite of his protective coloration, 
and he at once cut across the diameter of the circle. 
In spite of this short cut, the hare reached the bank of 
the open river many yards ahead. Well out in the 
midst of the rushing icy water lay a sand bar, now 
covered with snow. To the blackcat's amazement and 
disgust, and contrary to every tradition of the chase, 
this unconventional hare plunged with a desperate 



130 WILD FOLK 

bound fully ten feet out into the icy water. Wabasso 
was no swimmer, and had evidently elected to travel 
by water in the same way which he had found suc- 
cessful by land. Kicking mightily with his hind legs 
he hopped his way through the water, raising him- 
self bodily at every kick, only to sink back until but 
the top of his white nose showed. Nevertheless, in a 
wonderfully short time he had won his way through 
the wan water, and lay panting and safe on the sand 
bank. If pursued, he could take to the water again 
and hop his way to either shore, along which he could 
run and take to the water whenever it was necessary. 

To-night no such tactics were needed. The fisher, 
in spite of his name, hates water. He can swim, al- 
beit slowly and clumsily, in the summer time. As for 
leaping into a raging torrent of ice-cold water — it 
was not to be considered. The blackcat raced up and 
down the bank furiously, and not until convinced that 
the rabbit was on that snow bank for the night, did he 
give up the hunt and go bounding along the bank of 
the river after other and easier prey. For the 
first time that night the mildness of his face was 
marred by a snarling curl of the lips, showing the full 
set of cruel fighting teeth with which every weasel, 
large or small, is equipped. 

As the blackcat followed the line of the river, his 
sharp ear caught a steady and monotonous sound, 
like someone using a peculiarly dull saw. Around 
a bend the still water was frozen. Against the side 
of the bank an empty pork-keg had drifted down 
from some lumberman's camp, and frozen into the ice. 




THE SAFE RABBIT 



BLACKCAT 131 

In front of the shattered keg crouched a large, black- 
ish, hairy animal, gnawing as if paid by the hour. It 
was none other than the Canada porcupine — " Old 
Man Quillpig," as he is called by the lumberjacks, 
who hate him because he gnaws to sawdust every scrap 
of wood that has ever touched salt. The porcupine 
saw the blackcat, but never ceased gnawing. Many 
and many an animal has thought that he could kill 
sluggish, stupid Quillpig. The wolf, the lynx, the 
panther, and the wildcat all have tried — and died. 
So to-night the porcupine kept on with his gnawing, 
under the star-shine, convinced that no animal that 
lived could solve his defense. 

But the blackcat is one of two animals which 
have no fear of the quillpig. Blackbear is the other. 
With its swift, sinuous gait, the pekan came closer, 
whereupon Quillpig unwillingly stopped his sawing 
and thrust his head under the broken, frozen staves of 
the barrel. His belly hugged the ground, and in an 
instant he seemed to swell to double his normal size 
as he erected his quills and lashed this way and that 
with his spiked tail. Pure white, with dark tips, 
the quills were thickly barbed down to the extreme 
point, which is smooth and keen. The barbs are 
envenomed, and wherever they touch living flesh cause 
it to rankle, swell, and fester for all save the pekan, 
whose flesh is immune to the virus. 

To-night the blackcat wasted no time. Disregard- 
ing the bristling quills and the lashing tail, the crafty 
weasel suddenly inserted a quick paw beneath the 
gnawer, and with a tremendous jerk tipped him over 



132 WILD FOLK 

on his bristling back. Before the quillpig could right 
himself, the fisher had torn open his unguarded belly, 
and proceeded to eat the quivering, flabby meat as 
if from the shell of an oyster, or to be more accurate, 
a sea urchin. Throughout these proceedings he dis- 
regarded the quills entirely. Many of them pierced 
his skin. Others were swallowed along with the 
mouthfuls of warm flesh, which he tore out and greed- 
ily devoured. By reason of some unknown charm, 
the barbed quills work out of a blackcat without harm, 
and pass through his intestines in clusters, like pack- 
ages of needles, without any inconvenience, although 
in any other animal save the bear they would inevi- 
tably cause death. 

As the pekan ate and ate, the stars began to dim in 
the blue-black sky, and a faint flush in the east an- 
nounced the end of his hunting day. With a fare- 
well mouthful, he started back through the snow for 
his hollow tree, making a long detour, to bring in the 
cached marten. As he approached the tree from whose 
crotch the slim golden body dangled, his leisurely 
lope changed into a series of swift bounds. For the 
first time, a snarl came from behind the pekan's mask. 
The dead marten was gone from the tree. In an open 
space which the wind had swept nearly clear of snow, 
it lay under the huge paws of a shadowy gray animal, 
with luminous pale yellow ej^es, a curious bob of a 
tail, and black tufted ears. For all the world, it looked 
like a gray cat, but such a cat as never lived in a house. 
Three feet long, and forty pounds in weight, the 
Canada lynx is surpassed in size only among its North 



BLACKCAT 133 

American relatives by that huger yellow cat, the 
puma or panther. 

At the snarl of the fisher, the cat looked up, and at 
the sight of the gliding black figure gave a low spit- 
ting growl and contemptuously dropped his great 
head to the marten's bloody throat. For a moment 
the big black weasel and the big gray cat faced each 
other. At first sight, it did not seem possible that the 
smaller animal would attack the larger, or that, if he 
did, he would last long. The fisher was less than half 
the size and weight of the lynx, who also outwardly 
seemed to have more of a fighting disposition. The 
tufted ears alert, the eyes gleaming like green fire, 
and the bristling hair and arched back, contrasted 
formidably with the broad forehead and round, honest 
face of the fisher. 

So, at least, it seemed to young Jim Linklater, who, 
with his uncle Dave, the trapper, lay crouched close 
in a hemlock copse. Long before daylight, the two 
had traveled on silent snowshoes up the river bank, 
laying a trap-line, carrying nothing but a back-load 
of steel traps. At the rasping growl of the lynx, they 
peered out of their covert only to find themselves not 
thirty feet away from the little arena. 

"That old lucifee'll rip that poor, little, black in- 
nocent to pieces in jig-time," whispered young Jim. 

Old Dave shook his grizzled head. He pulled his 
nephew's ample ear firmly and painfully close to his 
mouth. 

" Son," he hissed, " you and that lucifee are both 
goin' to have the surprise of your lives." 



134 WILD FOLK 

L T n witting of his audience, the weasel approached 
the cat swiftly. Suddenly with a hoarse screech, the 
lynx sprang, hoping to land with all his weight on the 
humped-up black back, and then bring into play his 
ripping curved claws, while he sank his teeth deep 
into his opponent's spine. 

It was at once evident that lynx tactics have not 
yet been adapted to blackcat service. Without a 
sound, the pekan swerved like a shadow to one side, 
and almost before the lynx had touched the ground, 
the fisher's fierce cutting teeth had severed the tendon 
of a hind leg, while its curved claws slashed deep into 
the soft inner flank. 

The great cat screeched with rage and pain and 
sheer astonishment. As he landed, the crippled leg 
bent under him. Even yet he had one advantage 
which no amount of courage or speed on the part 
of the pekan could have overcome. If only the lynx 
had gripped the dead marten, and sprung out into the 
deep snow, the fisher would have had to fieht a losing 
fight. Like the hare, the lynx is shod with snowshoes 
in the winter, on which he can pad along on snow in 
which a fisher would sink deep at every step. In 
spite of his formidable appearance, however, the lynx 
has a plentiful lack of brains. As his leg doubled 
under his weight, this one in a panic threw himself on 
his back, the traditional cat attitude of defense, ready 
to bring into action all four of his sets of ripping 
claws, with his teeth in reserve. 

Against another of the cat tribe such a defense 
would have been good. Against the pekan it was 



BLACKCAT 135 

fatal. No battler in the world is a better in-fighter 
than the blackcat, and any antagonist near his size, 
who invites a clinch, rarely comes out of it alive. 
The pekan first circled the spinning, yowling, 
slashing lynx more and more rapidly, until 
there came a time when the side of the gray 
throat lay before him for a second unguarded. 
It was enough. With a pounce like the stroke of a 
coiled rattler, the pekan sprang, and a double set of 
the most effective fighting teeth known among mam- 
mals met deep in the lynx's throat. With all of his 
sharp eviscerating claws, the great cat raked his op- 
ponent. But the blackcat, protected by his thick pelt 
and tough muscles, was content to exchange any num- 
ber of surface slashes for the throat-hold. Deeper 
and deeper the crooked teeth dug; and then with a 
burst of bright blood, they pierced the jugular vein it- 
self. The struggles of the lynx became weaker and 
weaker, until, with a last convulsive shudder, the gray 
body stretched out stark in the snow. The weasel lay 
panting and lapping at the hot, welling blood, while 
his own ran down his black fur in unconsidered 
streams. 

It was young Jim who first broke the silence. 

" Those pelt '11 bring all of twenty-five dollars," 
he remarked, stepping forward. 

" Help yourself," suggested old Dave, not stirring, 
however, from where he stood. 

At the voices the black weasel sprang up like a 
flash. With one paw on the dead lynx and another 
on the marten, he faced the two men in absolute silence. 



136 WILD FOLK 

The eyes under the mild forehead flamed red and hor- 
rible and the dripping body quivered for another 
throat-hold. 

" Seems like Mr. Blackcat wants 'em both," mur- 
mured the old man, discreetly withdrawing from the 
farther side of the copse. Jim gazed into the flam- 
ing eyes a moment longer and then followed his uncle. 

"He don't look so blame innocent after all," he 
observed. 



VIII 
LITTLE DEATH 

For three long months the blue-white snow had lain 
over the gold-white sand among the dark-green pitch 
pines standing like trees from a Noah's Ark. To-day 
the woods were a vast sea of green, lapping at the 
white sand-land that had been thrust up, a wedge 
from the South, into the very heart of the North. A 
crooked stream had cut its course deep through the 
forest. On its high bank the ghost-like glory of a 
mountain laurel overhung the dark water. Close 
to the water's edge were clumps of the hollow, crim- 
son-streaked leaves of the pitcher plant, lined with 
thousands of tiny teeth all pointing downward, traps 
for unwary insects. All the winter these pitchers had 
been filled with clear cone-shaped lumps of ice; but 
to-day, above the fatal leaves, on long stems, swung 
great blossoms, wine-red, crimson, aquamarine, pearl- 
white, and pale gold. 

From overhead came the trilling song of the pine 
warbler, like a chipping sparrow lost in the woods; 
and here and there could be caught glimpses of his 
pale yellow breast and white wing-bars. Below, 
among the tangled scrub oaks, flitted the brilliant 
yellow-and-black prairie warbler, while everywhere 

137 



138 WILD FOLK 

the chewinks called " Drink your tea," and the Mary- 
land yellow-throat sang "Witchery, witchery, witch- 
ery," while jays squalled in the distance, and crimson- 
crested cardinals whistled from the thickets. In the 
sky, like grim black aeroplanes, wheeled the turkey 
buzzards, sailing in circles without ever a wing stroke. 
Gray pine- swifts, with brilliant blue patches on their 
sides, scurried up and down tree trunks and along 
fallen logs, and brown cottontail rabbits hopped across 
the paths, showing their white powder puffs at 
each jump. A huge, umber-brown-and-white pine 
snake, with a strange pointed head, crawled slowly 
through the brush while rows of painted turtles dot- 
ted the snags which thrust out here and there above 
the stream. 

Earth, air, and water, all swarmed with life at this 
dawn of the year. The underground folk were 
awake, too. Down below the surface, the industrious 
mole, with his plush fur and spade-like hands, dug in- 
cessantly his hunting-tunnels for earthworms. Above 
him, in wet places, his cousin, the star-nosed mole, 
whose nose has twenty-two little fingers, drove pas- 
sages through the lowest part of the moss beds and 
the soft upper mould. 

Still nearer the surface, just under the leaf-carpet, 
sometimes digging his own way, sometimes using the 
tunnels of the meadow-mice and deer-mice, and 
occasionally flashing out into the open air, lived the 
smallest mammal. Of all the tribes of earth, of all 
the bat-folk who fly the air, or the water-people 
who swim the seas and rivers and lakes, no mammal 



LITTLE DEATH 139 

is so little. From the tip of his wee pointed muzzle to 
the base of his tiny tail, he was just about the length 
of a man's little finger, or about two and a half 
inches. Nature had handicapped her smallest child 
heavily. Blind, earless, and tiny, yet every twenty- 
four hours he must kill and eat his own weight in 
flesh and blood ; for so fiercely swift are the functions 
of his strange, wee body, that, lacking food for even 
six hours, the blind killer starves and dies. 

To-day, near the edge of the stream, in the soft, 
white sand, his trail showed. It looked like a string 
of tiny exclamation points. Suddenly, from a patch 
of dry leaves there sounded a long rustling, like the 
crawling of a snake. Nothing could be seen, yet the 
leaves heaved and moved here and there, as something 
pushed its way under the surface of the leaf -carpet. 
Then, the masked shrew — for so we humans have 
named this escape from Lilliput — flashed out into 
the open. His glossy, silky fur was brown above 
and whitish-gray underneath ; and between the hidden, 
unseeing eyes and the holes which took the place of 
ears was a dark smoky-gray mark, like a mask. His 
head angled into a long whiskered snout, so pointed 
that from above the shrew looked like a big pen. This 
flexible muzzle he twisted here and there, sniffing 
uncertainly, for the shrew has but little sense of smell. 
In fact, he seems to have traded the greater part of 
his other senses for a double portion of two — touch 
and hearing. Not even the long-eared rabbit can 
detect the faintest shade of a sound quicker than the 
shrew, and only the bat equals his sense of touch. 



140 WILD FOLK 

Like that flyer., the shrew can detect an obstacle in 
time to avoid it. even when running at full speed, 
by becoming conscious of some subtle change in the 
air-pressure. 

Among the great throng of little wild folk play- 
ing at hide-and-seek with death among the fallen 
logs, and in the labyrinth of passageways in the beds 
of sand and moss and fern, no one was swifter than 
this one. the smallest of them all. A flash here, a 
glimpse farther on. and he was gone, too fast to be 
followed by human eyes. In one of his rare pauses 
he might have been mistaken for a tiny mouse by 
reason of his general coloration; yet the shrew is as 
different from the mouse as a lynx from a wolf. Xo 
mouse has long, crooked, crocodile jaws, rilled 
with perhaps the fiercest fighting teeth of any mam- 
mal: nor does anv mouse have the tremendous iaw 
muscles which stood out under the soft fur of this 
beastling. 

To-dav. as the shrew sniffed here and there, trvincr 
to locate trails which a weasel or a dog could have fol- 
lowed instantly, his quick ear caught some tiny sound 
from the near-by burrow of a meadow-mouse. With 
a curious pattering, burrowing run. unlike the leaps 
and bounds of the mice-people, he started unerringly 
toward a narrow opening almost hidden under an over- 
hanging patch of yellow-green sphagnum moss. Dis- 
appearing down the tunnel, he dashed along furiously, 
while his long widespread whiskers gave him instant 
notice of the turns and twists of the tunnel., which he 
threaded at full speed. 




i— i 




LITTLE DEATH 141 

Ahead of him fled a young meadow-mouse, on his 
way to join other members of the family who were 
having a light lunch on what was left in the store- 
house of their winter's supplies. Hearing the rapid 
pattering and sniffing behind him, the mouse made 
the fatal mistake of keeping on to the storeroom — 
a large chamber underground, where three grown 
mice were feasting. Confident in the fighting ability 
of his family, he had yet to learn that odds are nothing 
to a shrew. In spite of his speed, the mouse dashed 
into the round room only a little ahead of his pur- 
suer. The storehouse was large enough to make a 
good battleground, but, unfortunately for the mice, 
contained only one entrance. 

Then followed a battle great and grim. The mice 
were on their own ground, four against one and that 
one only a tiny blind beastling less than half the 
size and weight of any one of them. It did not seem 
as if the shrew had a chance against the burly, round- 
headed meadow-voles, who are the best fighters of all 
the mice-folk. Yet the issue was never in doubt. The 
shrew attacked with incredible swiftness. No one of 
his four foes could make a motion that his quick ear 
and uncanny sense of touch did not at once detect. 
Moreover, throughout the whole fight, he never for 
an instant left the exit-tunnel unguarded. Time and 
again, from out of the whirling mass of entangled 
bodies, a meadow-mouse would spring to the door to 
escape. Always it ran against the fell jaws of the 
little blind death, and bounded back from the latter's 
rigid steel-like body. Again and again the mice 



142 WILD FOLK 

leaped high, and like little boxers thrust the shrew 
away from them by quick motions of their forepaws. 
At times they would jump clear over him, slashing 
and snapping as they went, with their two pairs of 
long curved sharp teeth. The shrew's snout, how- 
ever, was of tough leathery cartilage. Its tiny hid- 
den and unseeing eyes needed no protection, while 
its thick fur and tough skin could be pierced only 
by a long grip, which he prevented by his tactics. 
Xever using his forefeet like the mice, he stood with 
feet outspread and firmly braced, head and snout 
pointing up, and constantly darted his jaws forward 
and downward with fierce tearing bites. With each 
one he brought no less than six pointed fighting teeth 
into play. These, driven by the great muscles of the 
shrew's neck and jaws, made ghastly ripping cuts 
through the thin skins of the mice. The latter kept 
up a continual squeaking as they moved, but the little 
killer fought in absolute silence. His wee body 
seemed to have an inexhaustible store of fierce strength 
and endurance, and throughout the battle it was 
always the shrew who attacked and the mice who 
retreated. Like the raccoon, the shrew is perfectly bal- 
anced on all four feet, and can move forward, back- 
ward, or sidewise with equal readiness. With swift 
little springs this one constantly tried for a throat- 
hold ; yet amid the tangle and confusion of the strug- 
gle, never once did he fail to guard the one way out. 
Round and round the storehouse the battle surged 
for a long half hour, with the shrew always between 
the doorway and his struggling, leaping opponents. 



LITTLE DEATH 143 

The grain-fed mice lacked the blood-bought endurance 
of their opponent. The young mouse who had led the 
shrew to the storehouse was the first to go. In the 
very middle of a leap, he staggered and fell at the 
feet of his enemy. Instantly the long curved jaws 
dosed on his head, and the fierce teeth of the shrew 
crunched into his brain. 

It was the beginning of the end. One by one the 
others fell before the automatic rushes and slashes of 
the little fighting-machine, until only one was left, a 
scarred, skilled veteran, who had held his own in many 
a fight. As he felt his strength ebbing, with a last 
desperate effort the mouse dodged one of the shrew's 
rushes, and managed to sink his two pairs of curved 
teeth into the tough muscles of the other's neck. Then 
a horrifying thing happened. Without even try- 
ing to break the mouse's grip, the shrew bent nearly 
double, and buried his pointed muzzle deep into the 
soft flesh below the other's foreleg. Driven by the 
cruel hunger which ruled his life, he ate like fire 
through skin and flesh and bone. The mouse fought, 
the shrew ate, and the outcome was certain, as it must 
be when a fighter who depends on four teeth dares 
the clinch with one who uses twelve. Even as the 
mouse unlocked his jaws for a better hold he tottered 
and fell dead under the feet of the other. 

For long days and nights the shrew stayed in the 
storeroom, until all that remained of the meadow-mice 
were four pelts neatly folded and four skeletons 
picked bare of even a shred of flesh. Moreover, the 
store of seeds left by the mice was gone, too. 



144 WILD FOLK 

Finally, one morning, as the sun came up over the 
pines, the little masked death flashed out of the bur- 
row with the same pattering rush with which he had 
entered, and hurried toward a near-by brook, to 
quench an overpowering thirst. As he approached the 
bank, he passed one of his larger brethren, the blarina, 
or mole shrew, whose track in the sand was like an un- 
covered tunnel filled with zigzag paw-prints. Al- 
though both were blind, each felt the other's presence, 
and it was fortunate for the smaller of the two that the 
blarina had also just fed, since shrews allow no ties 
of blood to interfere with their eminently practical 
appetites. 

Just before the little blind rumier reached the bank, 
he encountered another wanderer, whom few of the 
smaller animals meet and live. It was that demon of 
the woods, the short-tailed weasel, going to and fro 
in the earth, seeking whom he might devour. Behind 
him, as always, was a trail of dead and dying animals. 
Into every hole large enough to admit his slim body, 
he wormed his way like a hunting snake, and passed, 
swift and silent as death itself, through brush-piles, 
hollow logs, and up and down trees, to peer into the 
round window of a woodpecker's home or a squirrel's 
nest. Meadow-mice, deer-mice, chipmunks, rats, rab- 
bits, and even squirrels in their trees the slayer ran 
down to their death; for, unlike the shrews, a weasel 
kills from blood-lust and not from hunger. 

Like some great inch-worm, the weasel looped its 
way along, until its path crossed that of the shrew 
pattering toward the brook. Even in the face of 



LITTLE DEATH 145 

this incarnate terror of the wild folk the little shrew 
showed all the stubborn courage of his race and, re- 
fusing to turn aside, passed within an inch of the 
deadly jaws of the red killer. Nothing in nature, 
save the stab of one of the coiled pit-vipers, is swifter 
than the pounce of the weasel. In his grip the shrew, 
despite all of his fierce courage, would have had no 
more chance than a man ground by the frightful teeth 
of a killer whale. Against the larger mammals, how- 
ever, this fierce fragment of flesh and blood has one 
last defense, which saved him that day. 

As the weasel caught a whiff of the pungent, evil 
odor of the shrew's fur, he drew aside, his lips curled 
back over his sharp teeth in a grimace of disgust, and 
the masked beastling passed unscathed. At a little 
cove by the edge of a stump, the shrew drank deep. 
The pointed snout had just come to the surface, 
when his quick hearing caught from overhead a tiny 
flutter of sound. Long ages of sudden death from 
the air for the shrew-folk made the next movement 
of this one automatic. As if this sound-wave from 
overhead had touched some reflex, he dived into the 
water at the first vibration, like a frog, and swam 
deep down under the overhanging bank. A frac- 
tion of a second later a pair of sharp, cramped talons 
sank deep into the bank where he had stood, print- 
ing in the sand the " K " signature of the hawk-folk, 
and a buff-waistcoated sparrow hawk swooped into 
the air again, with a shrill disappointed, " killi, killi, 
killi!" 

As the little fugitive swam along the bank some- 



146 WILD FOLK 

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snake never bad a chanrr. As 1 



LITTLE DEATH 147 

touched the whiskered muzzle, the shrew swerved, and 
escaped the snapping teeth by the width of a hair, 
while the crooked crocodile jaws clinched in the large 
muscles at the angle of the snake's jaw. The barred 
serpent hissed fiercely, throwing off the sickening ef- 
fluvium like decayed fruit, which is one of the defenses 
of a fighting watersnake, and threw its thick body 
into swift changing loops and coils, hurling the shrew 
back and forth. The little animal held on with its 
death grip, and the crooked jaws burrowed deeper 
and deeper, bringing into play the long rows of sharp 
cutting teeth. 

A watersnake is not a constrictor, and the sandy 
sides of the den were too soft and narrow to enable 
it to dislodge the shrew's grip by battering the animal 
against the walls of the burrow ; but again and again 
it tried to throw its coils over its opponent's rigid body, 
so as to afford leverage enough to tear the punishing 
jaws loose. Each time, by a swift movement, the 
shrew would escape the changing loops, and never for 
an instant ceased to drive its teeth deeper, until they 
cut clear through the snake's temporal muscles, and 
its lower jaw dangled limp and useless. Freed then 
from any fear of attack, the shrew sank his long curved 
teeth deliberately into the reptile's brain, and although 
the snake still struggled, the battle was over. 

Once more the ever-hungry little mammal claimed 
the spoils of victory. Only when there was nothing 
left of the snake but a well-picked skeleton, did he 
leave the den. Then again he drank deeply, plunged 
up through the water, and landed after dark on the 



US WILD FOLK 

same little beach from which he had dived days before. 
As he scurried across an open space in the woods.. 
a dark shadow drifted down from the tree tops and 
two great wings hovered over him, so muffled by soft 
feathers that not even the shrew heard a single beat 
or flutter from them. A second longer above ground, 
and all his fierceness and courage and swiftness would 
have availed him nothing against the winged death 
that overshadowed him. 

At that instant, far and faint came a little twitter- 
ing note from under the leaf carpet. It was only the 
shadow of a sound, but in a wink the shrew was gone, 
following the love call of his mate underground. 
Overhead sounded the deep and dreadful voice of a 
barred owl, as it floated back to its tree top, disap- 
pointed for once of its prey. 

At midnight Ben Gunnison, the peddler, reached 
the little glade where the shrew had disappeared. 
Trying for a short cut through the Barrens, Ben had 
followed the old cattle-trail from Perth Amboy, un- 
used for more than a century. At first it stretched 
straight and plain through the pitch-pine woods. Be- 
yond Double Trouble and Mount Misery, it began 
to wind, and by the time he had reached Four Mile 
he was lost. For long he staggered under his heavy 
pack through thickets of scrub oak, white-cedar 
swamps, and tangles of greenthorn. By the time he 
had reached the little opening, he was exhausted, and 
putting his pack under his head for a pillow, lay 
down under a great sweet-gum tree to sleep out the 
night. 



LITTLE DEATH 149 

Just before dawn he was awakened by high-pitched, 
trilling, elfin music. Opening his eyes, he saw in the 
light of the setting moon two tiny things chasing 
each other round and round his pack, singing as they 
ran. Even as he listened, he heard from overhead 
an ominous cracking noise, and leaped to his feet just 
as a decayed stub whizzed down, landing with a 
crash on his pack. As long as he lives, Ben will be- 
lieve that two fairies saved his life. 

" Don't tell me," he would say. " I saw 'em. 
Little weeny fellows half the size of a mouse callin' 
me to get up. An' I got up. That's the reason I'm 
here to-day, bless 'em." 



IX 
BLACKCROSS 

After running twenty miles, old Raven Road 
stopped to rest under a vast black-oak tree. Beyond 
its sentinel bulk was Wild-Folk Land. Where 
hidden springs had kept the wet grass green all winter, 
the first flower of the year had forced its way through 
the cold ground. Smooth as ivory, all crimson-lake 
and gold-green on the outside, the curved hollow 
showed a rich crimson within. Cursed with an ill 
name and an evil savor, yet the skunk cabbage leads 
the year's procession of flowers. 

Among the dry leaves of the thickets showed the 
porcelain petals of a colony of hepatica, snow-white, 
pale pink, violet, deep purple, pure blue, lilac, and 
lavender. Beyond them was a patch of spice-bush, 
whose black fragrant branches snapped brittle as 
glass, and whose golden blossoms appear before the 
leaves. At the foot of a bank, hidden by the scented 
boughs, bubbled a deep unfailing spring, and from it 
a little trickle of water wound through the thicket into 
the swale beyond. Growing wider and deeper with 
every rod, it ran through a little valley hidden be- 
tween two round, green hills, which widened into a 
stretch of marshland filled with reeds and thickets of 

150 



BLACKCROSS 151 

wild rose, elderberry, and buttonbush, laced and in- 
terlaced with the choking orange strands of that para- 
site, the dodder. 

Beside the stream, and at times crossing it, a path, 
trodden deep, twisted in and out of the marsh. It 
was too narrow to have been made by human feet, 
nor could any man have found and followed so unerr- 
ingly the little ridges of dry going hidden away be- 
tween the bogs and under the lush growth. Packed 
hard by long years of use, nowhere in the path's whole 
length did any paw-print show. Only in snow-time 
was the white page printed deep with tracks like 
those of a dog, but cleaner cut and running in a 
straight line instead of spraddling to one side. Nor 
was there ever in these trails the little furrow which 
a dragging paw makes. Only a fox could have made 
that long straight line, where every paw-print was 
stamped in the soft snow as if with a die. From 
Cold Spring to Darby Creek the long narrow valley 
belonged to the fox-folk. 

Close beside the spring itself, at the very edge of 
its fringe of bushes, was a deep burrow that ran out 
into the open field, and yet was so cunningly hidden by 
a rock and masked by bushes and long grass that few 
humans ever suspected that a sly, old, gray fox had 
lived there for a fox-lifetime, or nearly ten years. 
His range extended to the swamp on the south, and up 
through the tangle of little wooded hills and valleys 
to the north known throughout the countryside as the 
Ridge. 

The other end of Fox Valley, and all the Darby 



152 WILD FOLK 

Creek country from Fern Valley to Blacksnake 
Swamp was owned by a red-fox family. They were 
larger than the gray foxes and the blood of long-ago 
English foxes, brought over by fox-hunting colonial 
governors, ran in their veins. To the strength and 
size of the American fox they added the craft of a 
thousand generations of hunted foxes on English 
soil. 

Both fox families kept, for the most part, strictly 
to their own range, for poaching in a fox country 
always means trouble. Both ranges were well stocked 
with rabbits, three varieties of mice, birds, frogs, and 
the other small deer on which foxes live. Occasion- 
ally the hunters of both families would make a foray 
on some far-away farm and bring back a plump hen, 
a pigeon, or sometimes a tame duck. Xever did the 
hunter rob a near-by farm, or go twice in succession to 
the same place; for it is a foolish fox who will make 
enemies for himself on his own home ranges — and 
f oolish foxes are about as common as white crows. 

The red-fox range included a number of well-hid- 
den homes. Rarely did they occupy the same house 
two seasons in succession, for experience has taught 
foxes that long leases are neither sanitary nor safe. 
This year they were living on the slope of a dry hill- 
side in the very heart of a beech wood. Long years 
before thev had fashioned their verv first home, and 
during every succeeding year of occupancy had added 
improvements and repairs, until it was as complete 
a residence as any fox family could wish. The first 
burrow, which was some nine inches in diameter, ran 



BLACKCROSS 153 

straight into the hillside for about three feet; then it 
angled sharply along the side of a hidden rock, and ran 
back some twenty feet more. From off the main shaft 
branched different galleries. One led to a storehouse, 
and another to a chamber where the garbage of the 
den was buried ; for there are no better housekeepers 
among the wild folk than the foxes. Last and best 
hidden of all was the sleeping-room, fully twelve 
inches across, and carefully lined with soft, dry grass. 

The perpendicular air shaft ran from the deepest 
part of the tunnel to the centre of a dense thicket on 
the hillside. In an irregular curve of some twenty 
feet, two more entrances were dug. Both of these 
joined the main shaft after describing an angle. 
Last of all was the emergency exit, the final touch 
which makes a fox home complete. It is always con- 
cealed carefully, and is never used except in times 
of great danger. This one was dug down through a 
decayed chestnut stump some two feet high, hidden in 
a fringe of bushes some distance up the hillside, and 
wound itself among the roots, and connected with the 
sleeping-chamber. Back of the main entrance lay 
a chestnut log fully three feet through, and screened 
from the hilltop by a thicket interlaced with green- 
brier. This was the watchtower and sun-parlor of 
the fox family. From it they could survey the whole 
valley, while one bound would bring them to any one 
of the regular entrances. 

On a day in early April, full of sunshine and 
showers blowing across a soft spring sky, the old dog 



154 WILD FOLK 

fox approached the den, carrying a cottontail rabbit 
slung over one shoulder. As he came to the main en- 
trance, he suddenly stopped and, with one foot raised, 
stood motionless, sniffing a faint scent from the depths 
of the burrow. Without entering, he laid the rabbit 
down at the lip of the opening and withdrew ; for no 
dog fox may enter his burrow after the cubs arrive. 
There were three of them — blind, lead-colored little 
kittens, who nuzzled and whimpered against Mother 
Fox's warm bodv and fed frantically every hour or 
so during the first days of their new life. For the 
next three weeks Father Fox hunted for five. Squir- 
rels, red and gray, chipmunks, birds, rabbits, and 
scores and scores of mice, found their way into the 
den. 

The ninth day of the cubs' life on earth marked 
an event more important to Mother Fox than the 
Declaration of Independence, or the promulgation of 
the Suffrage Amendment. On that date, all three of 
her cubs opened their eyes! Twelve nights later, 
when the Mav moonlight made a new heaven and a 
new earth, they took their first journey. It was 
only twenty feet, but it covered the distance from one 
world to another. For a moment three sharp little 
noses peered out wonderingly at the new world. It 
was roofed with a shimmering sky instead of damp 
earth, and was big and boundless and very, very 
beautiful. Altogether the newcomers approved of it 
highly, although there did seem to be a great waste 
of air, and it was not so warm and cozy as the world 
underground. 




d 

o 

w 
w 



BLACKCROSS 155 

Then the trio of little heads disappeared, and 
Mother Fox came out and winnowed the air through 
the marvelous mesh of her nostrils. Convinced that 
all was safe, she called her cubs out with one of those 
wild-folk signals pitched below the range of human 
ears. A moment later, the cubs were out and about 
in the dangerous, delightful world of out-of-doors. 
With their long, sprawly legs and heads too big 
for their bodies, they had something of the lumbering, 
appealing looks that puppies have. Their broad fore- 
heads and pricked-up ears seemed enormous com- 
pared with their little faces. Each one in turn put his 
head to one side and looked engagingly at the new 
world. With their soft woolly backs and round little 
stomachs, they seemed made to be patted and cuddled. 
Yet, playful and confiding as they appeared, a pro- 
found wisdom and craft looked out from their young 
eyes, which is never seen in those of any other animal. 

Mother Fox watched them with much pride. For- 
gotten were the nine cubs of the year before, and 
the quartettes and sextettes of many a yesteryear. 
Never before, in her opinion, had there ever been 
three cubs so wise and beautiful and remarkable as 
these. Suddenly she raised her voice in the squalling 
screech of a vixen. Again and again the fierce un- 
canny sound shuddered away over the hills, and a pair 
of newly arrived summer boarders, who were strolling 
along Raven Road in the moonlight, returned with 
exceeding haste to old Mose Butler's farmhouse, and 
reported to their grinning host that they had heard 
the scream of a panther. 



151 "ILD FOLK 

From far down Darby Creek came the answering 
bark of the old fox. Only the sudden explosive qual- 
ity of the sound made it resemble in any way the bark 
of a dog. A curious screeching quality of tone ran 
through it, and it sounded as if made by some animal 
who was trying to bark but had never really learned 
how. Then, with the disconcerting suddenness of a 
fox, Father Fox stood before his new family for the 
first time. From his narrow jaws swung a fringe 
of plump mice, with their tails ingeniously crossed so 
that they could all he carried by one grip of the narrow 
jaws. Dropping them, the old fox stared solemnly 
at his family grouped in the moonlight, and then 
growled deep and approvingly in his throat. Twc of 
the cubs wore the usu:.l :I:uied pale yellow of a 
young red fox. The third, however, showed, faintly 
outlined, a velvety black face, ears, muzzle, and legs, 
with a sflky black streak down his back, crossed at the 
shoulders by a similar stripe shading into reddish and 
sirrer-gray. while his little black tail had the silver tip 
which is the hall-mark of the rare cross-fox, which is 
sometimes horn into a red-fox family. 

From that night the training of the little fox fam- 
ily began, Father F :x no longer brought his kill 
directly to the den. Instead, he hid it not too care- 
fully some fifty j . and the cubs learned 
to know the scent of food — flesh or fowl — and to 
dig it out from under piles of leaves or brush, or 
even from under an inch or so of freshly dug earth. 
Then, with tiny growls, they would crouch and steal 
forward and pounce upon the defenseless kill, with 



BLACKCROSS 157 

tremendous exhibitions of craft and ferocity. They 
went out on little hunting-trips by night, with Mother 
Fox, to lonely hillside pastures, where she taught 
them to hunt field-mice in the withered grass. In the 
starlight, they would steal up to some promising 
clump, and rising on their hind legs peer far for- 
ward, with ears pricked up to catch the faintest squeak 
and eyes alert to note the tiniest movement in the 
grass. They learned to spring and pounce like light- 
ning, with outspread paws, just ahead of where the 
grass stirred ever so slightly. If successful, they 
would kill with one nip a plump, round-headed, short- 
tailed meadow-mouse. Every night they went farther 
and farther, until at last with Mother Fox they 
covered the whole range, at the brisk walk which is 
the usual hunting-gait of a fox, with frequent pauses 
and sniffings and listenings. 

It was Father Fox who first took them into the 
sunlight, which was as strange and unnatural to fox 
children as midnight out-of-doors would be to a hu- 
man child. He it was who taught them, when in 
danger, to stand still and keep on standing still — one 
of the most difficult courses in the wild-folk curric- 
ulum. Sometimes they met man, whose approach 
through the woods or across the fields sounded as 
loud to the fox children as the rumble of an auto-truck 
would sound to the human child. Crouched in the 
bleached tawny grass, absolutely immovable, the foxes 
looked so much like tussocks that it would have taken 
a trained eye indeed to have discovered them. 

Just as the cubs had grown old and wise enough to 



158 WILD FOLK 

be left in and about the burrows alone, the Sword fell. 
That night both of the old foxes were abroad on a hunt 
too long for the untrained muscles of the cubs. Await- 
ing their return, the little foxes were playing and frol- 
icking silently around the den. They had learned 
that the scent of man or dog means death to foxes, and 
to seek safety in their burrow at any strange sound. 
No one of them knew that a shadow in the air, which 
drifted silently nearer to the den, might conceal 
any danger. Suddenly the shadow fell, and seemed 
to blot out the little straw-colored cub farthest from 
the burrow. He had but time for a terrified whicker, 
when a double set of steel-like talons clamped through 
his soft fur clear to his heart, and in a second the little 
body shot up through the air and disappeared in the 
darkness. A few moments later, from a far-away 
clump of trees, sounded the deep sinister " Hoo, hoo, 
hoo. hoo. hoo n of the great horned owl. 

Once having found the fox family. Death followed 
fast on its trail. One morning the largest cub awoke, 
and decided to take a stroll by himself in the sunlight, 
without waiting for Father Fox to come, and without 
waking the rest of the family, who slept curled up to- 
gether in the sleeping-room of the den. Stealing out 
of the main burrow, the little cub sniffed the air wisely, 
and examined the landscape from under wrinkled 
brows with an air of profound consideration. At first 
he followed a winding path which ran through a bit 
of woodland where Mother Fox had taken him once 
before by night. Finding no trace of game there, he 
left the path and climbed up a rocky hillside half 




DEATH IN THE DARK 



BLACKCROSS 159 

covered with brush and trees. Just as he was turning 
a corner of a little rocky ledge which jutted out in 
front of him, he heard a low thick hiss. Directly in 
front of him, in an irregular loop, lay a hazel-brown 
snake, dappled with blunt Y's of a rich chestnut 
color, its head and neck being the color of rusty 
copper. 

For a second the young fox looked into the lid- 
less, deadly eyes of the copperhead, with their strange 
oval pupils, the hall-mark of the fatal pit-vipers. 
All in one flash, the grim jaws of the snake gaped 
open, the two movable fangs of the upper jaw un- 
folded and thrust straight out like tiny spearheads, 
and the fatal crooked needles stabbed deep in the 
cub's soft side. Growling fiercely in his little throat, 
he clenched his sharp teeth through the snake's spine ; 
but even as he closed his jaws, the fatal virus touched 
the tide of his life and he fell forward. 

The wild folk have no tears, nor may they show 
their sorrow by the sobs and wailing of humankind, 
yet there was something in the dumb despair of the 
two foxes who had followed the trail of their lost cub, 
as they hung over the soft little body, that showed 
that the love of our lesser brethren for their little 
ones is akin to the love of humankind. Thereafter 
all the watchfulness and the love and the hope of the 
two were concentrated on the little fox with the black 
cross on his back. Night and day Mother Fox 
guarded him. Day and night Father Fox taught and 
trained him, until he had acquired much of the lore of 
fox-kind. He learned to catch birds and mice and 




160 WILD FOLK 

frogs and squirrels, and even the keen-eared cottontail 
rabbit, whose eyes can see forward and backward 
equally well. He learned, too, the lessons of pru- 
dence and foresight which keep foxes alive when ice 
and snow have locked many of their larders. Once, 
when he was crossing a pasture with Father Fox, 
the latter stopped and stood like a pointing dog, one 
velvety black bent forefoot in the air, while with out- 
stretched muzzle he sniffed the faintest of warm 
scents, which seemed to float from a clump of tangled 
dry grass. Stealing forward like a shadow, the old 
fox sprang at the tusssock. Before he landed, a 
plump quail buzzed out of the cover like a bullet, to be 
caught by the fox in mid-air. Underneath a fringe 
of dry grass was a round nest of pure white, sharp- 
pointed eggs — so many of them that they were 
heaped up in layers. 

After eating the quail, the old fox carefully carried 
off the eggs and hid them under layers of damp moss, 
where they would keep indefinitely and be a resource 
in the famine days that were yet to come. 

Another day the cub learned the advantage of team- 
work. On that day the two old foxes were hunting 
together, and, as usual, Blackcross tagged along. 
Near the middle of a great field, a flock of killdeer 
were feeding — those loud-voiced plover, which wear 
two rings around their white necks. For a moment the 
two foxes stood motionless, staring at the distant 
birds. Then, without a sound, Mother Fox turned 
back. For a moment Blackcross could watch her 
as she made a wide detour around the field, and then 



BLACKCROSS 161 

she disappeared from sight. Father Fox lay still for 
several minutes, with his wise head resting on his fore- 
paws. Then, while Blackcross stayed behind, the old 
fox started deliberately toward the flock of feeding 
birds. At times he would stop, and bound high in 
the air, and scurry up and down, waving his flaunting 
brush and cutting curious capers, moving gradually 
nearer and nearer to the flock. 

The killdeer, which are wise birds in spite of their 
loud voices, moved farther and farther away toward 
the end of the pasture, ready to spring into the air and 
flash away on their long narrow wings if the fox came 
too near, but evidently much interested in his antics 
as they fed. Gradually the curveting fox edged the 
flock clear across the field, until they were close to 
a thicket that lay between the field and a patch of 
woods beyond. Then he redoubled his efforts, pranc- 
ing and bounding and rolling over and over, while his 
fluffy tail showed like a plume above the long grass, 
and the birds stopped feeding and watched him with 
evident curiosity. 

Suddenly, when the attention of the whole flock was 
fixed on the performing fox, there was a rustle in the 
thicket, and out flashed a tawny shape. Before the 
flock could spring into the air, Mother Fox had caught 
one bird in her teeth and beaten down another with 
her paws. 

Another morning Blackcross learned what happens 
to foxes who poach on their neighbor's preserves. In 
the early dawn-light, he was loping along the upper 
end of the valley with Father Fox. Suddenly the fur 



:-:: WILD FOLK 

bristled all along the latter's back, and he gave a 
little charring growl. Right ahead of him,, trotting 
along a path made by a generation of red-fox pads, 
came the old gray fox who lived by Cold Spring, a 
dead cottontail rabbit swung over one shoulder. The 
poacher was caught with the game. With another 
growl, the old red fox sprang at the trespasser. 
The gray fox was a mile from his burrow, and 
knowing that the red fox could outpace him. decided 
to fight for his booty. With a quick flirt of his head, he 
tossed the rabbit into a near-by bush, and with brist- 
ling back awaited the attack. 

Walking stiff -legged like two dogs, and growling 
deep in their throats, the two came together, until 
they stood sidewise to each other, sparring for an 
opening. Finally, the old red fox snapped at the 
other's foreleg, with a movement more like the slash 
of a wolf than the bite of a dog. The gray fox 
dropped his head, and the bared teeth of the two 
snicked together. Again the red fox made the same 
lead, and met with the same block. The third time 
he feinted, and as the other dropped his head, whirled 
and brought his brush, with a blinding, stinging swish. 
across the eyes of the gray fox. Before the latter 
could recover, the narrow jaws of the red fox had met 
in the soft fiesh just above the gray hind leg. A wolf 
would have hamstrung his opponent and killed him 
at his leisure : but foxes rarely fight to the death. As 
the old gray fox felt the rending teeth tear through his 
soft skin, he yelped, tore himself loose, and started 
full-speed for his den. For two hundred yards the 



BLACKCROSS 163 

red fox pursued him, with such swiftness that he man- 
aged to nip his unprotected hind quarters several 
times. At each bite the fleeing gray fox yelped with 
the high, shrill, sorrowful note of a hurt little dog; 
and when Father Fox returned to claim the spoils of 
victory, all that could be seen of the other was a gray 
streak moving rapidly toward Cold Spring. 

As the cub reached his full stature, he ranged far- 
ther and farther afield with the two old foxes. He 
learned all the hiding and camping places of the 
range, and how to sleep out in a blaze of sunlight in 
some deserted field, looking for all the world like a tus- 
sock of tawny blackened grass, or, if so be that he 
hunted by day and slept by night, he found that he 
wore a blanket on his back which kept him warm even 
during the coldest nights. As for his unprotected nose 
and four paddies, he wrapped them up warm in the 
fluffy rug of his thick soft brush. By the time frost had 
come, his fur had grown long and glossy and very 
beautiful, with the velvet cross of midnight-black bor- 
dered with old-gold, silver, and tawny-pink, his black 
brush waving aloft like a white-tipped plume. 

Death came with the frost, in the form of traps, 
hounds and hunters. Old Father Fox taught him 
how to escape them all. Many years ago he had lived 
across the hills on the lonely Barrack, where the 
Deans and the Blakesleys and the Howes and the 
Baileys and the Reeds have a far-away hill country of 
their own. Old Fred Dean lived there, and prided 
himself on both the wild and the tame crops which 
he raised on his hill farm. He made the whitest, 



164 WILD FOLK 

sweetest maple sugar in the world, and harvested 
hickories, chestnuts, butternuts, and even hazel-nuts. 
It was his fur crop, however, which was the most 
profitable. Foxes, raccoons, skunks, muskrat, mink 
■ — the old man knew how to trap them all. 

In Father Fox's second year, he was caught in a 
trap which Fred had cunningly hidden in the snow 
among a maze of cattle tracks — the last place where 
a fox would suspect danger. The fox finally managed 
to work his imprisoned foot out of the gripping jaws ; 
but it had cost him four toes to learn that the scent 
of man or iron meant death to foxes. He never for- 
got, and he taught Blackcross to fear the tiniest 
whiff of either. As for dogs, the old fox taught his 
cub that no dog can overtake a fox going uphill or 
in the rough, and that shifting sand and running 
water are the fox's friends, since his scent will he in 
neither. He taught him all the cut-offs, the jumps, 
and the run-backs of the range, and finally the cher- 
ished fortresses where, as a last resort, he might take 
refuge. 

When it came to hunters, the young fox had to take 
his chances. In the last analysis a man's brain can 
outwit that of a fox. It was when the blaze and the 
glow of the crimson and gold frost-fires had died 
away to the russet of late fall that the fox familv was 
most in danger, for the Raven Hunt Club needed 
a fox. Three times now the men had dressed them- 
selves with great care, in wonderful scarlet coats and 
shiny top-boots, while the women wore comfortable 
breeches and uncomfortable collars; and thev had 



BLACKCROSS 165 

all jumped fences and waded brooks and crashed 
through thickets; but never a fox could they find, so 
close had the dwellers in Fox Valley lain hidden. In 
fact, the last hunt had been a drag-hunt, and the pack 
had followed for hours the scent of a bag of anise 
which had been dragged the day before by a string, 
through the woods and across the fields, by a sleepy 
stable-boy on a broken-down hunter. But you cannot 
rise in your stirrups and shout "Tally-ho!" or 
" Stole away! " or any of the other proper hunting 
remarks, over a bag of anise. Then, too, the hounds 
have nothing to worry and kill at the end of the hunt ; 
nor can the brush be cut off for a trophy, for an anise 
bag has n't any brush. 

Thanksgiving was two scant weeks away, and it 
was absolutely necessary for the happiness of the 
Hunt that a live fox be secured at once. Accord- 
ingly the Raven Hunt Club offered fifty dollars for 
a live red fox. Grays were barred, because they 
prefer to hide in burrows and be safe rather than run 
and be killed. For a week all the farmers' boys for 
miles around Fox Valley trapped desperately, but 
without success. Father Fox had not paid four 
toes for nothing. Then they sent for Fred Dean. 
Thereafter, one night Blackcross, while hunting over 
a hilltop pasture, noted a long, freshly turned furrow 
that ran straight across the field, which was filled 
with old chaff taken from deserted barns and smelt 
delightfully of mice. Along the furrow and through 
the litter the young fox nosed his way, ready to pounce 
upon the first mouse which darted out. Suddenly 



166 WILD FOLK 

there was a snap, and Blackcross was caught by his 
slim dark muzzle. There the old trapper found him 
the next morning, hardly alive ; and when he saw that 
he had secured a cross-fox, demanded a hundred 
from the committee instead of the offered fifty. 
Said committee took the fox, and advertised far and 
wide that the Thanksgiving Hunt would be after 
such a fox as had never been hunted before in the 
memory of man. 

The holiday turned out to be one of those rare and 
fleeting days of Indian summer which Autumn 
sometimes borrows from her sister. The pack was 
in fine fettle. The horses and the hunters were fit, 
and the hunt breakfast excellent. Everybody was 
thankful — except the shivering little fox. For 
days he had been cooped in a dirty wire cage, and 
eaten tainted meat and drunk stale water, and he 
was stiff and sore from his night in the trap and from 
lack of exercise. Just at sunrise on Thanksgiving 
morning, he was crammed into a bag, and then let 
out two fields ahead of the pack. As he shot into the 
sunlight, there was a chorus of shouts, yells, and 
yelps, and a crowd of men, women, horses, and hounds 
rushed after him in a tremendous burst of speed. 

The young fox's legs tottered under him as he ran. 
Moreover, for a mile around the country was level. 
As he crossed the first field, the pack was already 
at the farther wall, and would surely have overtaken 
him in the third field if it had not been for one of the 
old fox's lessons. The pasture sloped up to where a 
sand bank showed as a great crescent gash in the 



BLACKCROSS 167 

turf. Springing to the side of the bank, the fox 
clung to it like a fly, scurried along its side, cleared 
the stone wall beyond, and headed for the thickets 
of Fox Valley. The shifting sand left no track or 
scent, and while the pack puzzled out the trail, Black- 
cross won to the shelter of the nearest thicket. 

Up and down the hillsides, across marshes and 
through tangles of underbrush, he doubled, checked, 
turned, and twisted. Raven Hunt, however, boasted 
the best pack of fox-hounds in the state, nor had 
Blackcross either the strength or endurance for a 
long run. His pace became slower and slower, while 
the bell-like notes of the hounds and the shouts of 
the hunters sounded ever nearer and louder. 

Only just in time the beset fox saw looming up 
before him the best hidden of all the fox fortresses 
in the Valley. It seemed only an impenetrable 
tangle of greenbrier on the hillside — that vine 
whose stems are like slim, green wires, studded 
everywhere with up -curved thorns through which 
neither man nor beast can force a way. Through 
the very middle of the tangle ran the naked trunk of 
a fallen chestnut, showing just above the barbed vines. 
As the pack scrambled through the barway at the foot 
of the hill, the little fox ran along the log, and with 
all his last remaining strength sprang far out across 
the interlaced tangle of vine and thorn, where the 
smooth needles under a little white pine made a tiny 
island in the thicket. From there the fox bounded 
over a narrow belt of greenbrier into a mass of wild 
honeysuckle, whose glossy green leaves and bending 



168 WILD FOLK 

vine-stocks carpeted the hill at that point fully two 
feet deep. Across the yielding surface he hurried, 
until he reached the entrance of a little tunnel beneath 
the vines, entirely hidden from sight by the drooping 
leaves. Through this he crept noiselessly, beneath 
the green carpet, until he reached the entrance to a 
burrow which led far up the hillside and had no less 
than three well-concealed exits. 

For a long hour the pack and the hunters and the 
horses circled and beat and trampled back and forth 
through the thicket, and as far into the greenbrier 
tangle as they could force a way ; but no one of them 
found the lost trail. A hundred dollars had been 
spent and nothing killed. Everybody agreed that 
it was a most unfortunate ending to a good day — 
everybody, that is, except the fox. 

As the months wore on, Blackcross hunted more 
and more by himself, nor did he use any of the family 
dens. This was partly because snow leaves a tell- 
tale trail, which he who hunts can read, and partly 
because of a difference in the attitude toward him of 
the old foxes. Among the wild folk the love and care 
of parents cease when their children have become full- 
grown. This is part of nature's plan to scatter 
families, and prevent the in-breeding which will 
weaken the stock. At last the time came when 
Mother Fox no longer allowed him the freedom of 
the den in which he had been born, and Father Fox 
growled in his throat when he met him carrying his 
kill. 

Then the love-moon of the foxes in February 



BLACKCROSS 169 

showed in the sky, and something drove Blackcross 
far afield — something that called and cried, and 
would not let him sleep, and took away even the 
interest and joy of a successful hunt. Across the 
ridges, through Fern Valley and beyond Blacksnake 
Swamp he journeyed, until, far beyond them all, 
he found a lonely valley shut in on all four sides by 
steep slopes, and untenanted by any of the fox-folk. 
On the crest of one of the hills stood an abandoned 
haystack, left by some thriftless farmer years before, 
and so bleached and weathered by sun and storm 
that it was useless as hay, but an ideal place for a 
fox-warren. Under this Blackcross dug a home with 
many entrances, all of them cunningly concealed by 
the overhanging hay. Through the centre of the 
stack itself, he ran a series of tunnels and rooms, 
besides the safer ones far underground. 

Finally, it was almost completed — almost but 
not quite. Night after night the young fox barked 
from the top of the hill with a sharp staccato screech, 
which could be heard a long mile away. Then came 
the night of the full moon. There was no snow 
and overhead in the crisp air wheeled Orion the 
Hunter, Lepus the Hare, the Great and Little Dog, 
and all the other mighty constellations of winter. 
Under the sheen and shimmer of the stars and through 
the still moonlight, Blackcross sent his bark echoing 
and ringing, until at long last it was answered by a 
curious, high-pitched squall which to Blackcross 
contained all the magic and music of sky and earth. 
Nearer and nearer the sound approached, until 



170 WILD FOLK 

finally, in the moonlight, a slim tawny figure stole 
up to the stack. For a moment black muzzle and 
tawny touched. Then Blackcross turned and dis- 
appeared down one of the entrances to his burrow, 
and the stranger followed. At last, his home was 
complete. 






X 

SEA OTTER 

The short Arctic summer had flung its flower fields 
among the glaciers of the Siberian coast, like many- 
colored jewels set in crystal. Flocks of skuas, 
jaegers, and little auks circled and screamed above 
the smoky green waters of the Straits; and far out 
from shore a bed of kelp writhed and tossed like a 
mass of golden-brown sea snakes. 

There, cradled on the swaying stems, a water-baby 
was born. He had a funny little nose, with a padded 
cushion on top which made it look like the ace of 
spades, and his round, blunt head was of a dingy white 
color, while the rest of his fifteen inches was covered 
with a loose, kinky, gray-brown coat. Its harsh 
outer surface, sprinkled with long white hairs, covered 
a velvet-like inner fur that gave promise of the glory 
that was yet to be. 

In spite of his insignificant appearance, the little 
cub was of blood royal, of the lineage of the sea otter, 
that king of fur-bearers, who wears a fortune on his 
back and is dogged by death every moment of his life. 
Vitus Behring and his shipwrecked crew discovered 
them in 1741, in the surf and shallows around a barren 
island, in the sea which now bears his name. When 

171 



172 WILD FOLK 

they won their way back to Asia, sly, wise Chinese 
merchants paid their weight in silver for the new 
furs, so lustrous, silky, and durable, which the sailors 
had been using for coats and blankets. In Russia 
they came to be worth their weight in gold, outranking 
even the royal sables, which none but the Tsar and 
his nobles might wear. To-day the pelt of a sea otter 
is worth its weight in platinum or palladium. 

This last-born princeling soon learned how to float 
on his back, with his round little head just showing 
above the kelp. For the most part, however, he lived 
clasped in his mother's arms and wrapped in the silky 
folds of her fur, while he nuzzled and fed against her 
warm breast, making happy little chirps and grunts 
of satisfaction, quite like a human baby. 

To-day, as they rocked back and forth in the swing- 
ing water, the kelp -carpet in front of them parted, 
and a great, blunt, misshapen head thrust itself into 
the air a few yards away. It had little eyes set high 
in the skull, while the ears showed below the grinning 
mouth filled full of blunt teeth like white water-worn 
pebbles — the hallmark of a sea otter. 

The newcomer was none other than Father Otter, 
come to look over his son and heir. He did not come 
very close to his family, for mother otters do not 
permit even their mates to approach too near a new- 
born cub. As the old dog otter stretched himself 
out on the kelp -raft, his cylindrical body, all gleaming 
ebony and silver in the sunlight, showed nearly as 
long as that of a man, and weighed perhaps a hundred 
and twenty-five pounds. It was the great otter's 



SEA OTTER 173 

pelt, however, that stamped him as the sea king that 
he was. Lustrous as light on the water, the inner 
fur had a close pile like velvet and, frosted with long 
white hairs, showed a tinge of silver-purple gleaming 
through its long loose folds. 

For some time the old dog otter gravely surveyed 
his mate and his new cub, approvingly. Then he 
scanned sea and sky and kelp, listening the while with 
a pair of the sharpest ears that ever guarded the life 
of one of the wild folk, at the same time winnowing 
the air through a pair of nostrils that could smell 
smoke — that danger-signal to all wild people — a 
mile away. There was no sign of danger anywhere, 
and a moment later he disappeared under the water, 
after the food which his vibrant body unceasingly 
required. 

For long after his disappearance the mother otter 
anxiously studied the horizon for the tiniest danger- 
signal. Convinced at last that all was well, she 
stretched herself out on the slow-swinging kelp, for 
one of those periods of quiet happiness which come 
even into the lives of the hunted. While her cub 
snuggled against her soft fur, she tossed a kelp-bulb 
high into the air, catching it like a ball, first in one 
bare little palm, then in the other, while she sang the 
cradle- song which all little sea otters know. High 
and shrill she chirped and twittered like a bird, in 
the midst of that lonely sea, clasping her sleepy baby 
closer as she sang. 

There seemed no living thing near, yet death is 
never far from the sea otter. From mid-sky what 



174 WILD FOLK 

seemed a dark wisp of cloud drifted toward the sea. 
Driven down by hunger from the North, an eagle owl, 
all buff and gray and brown, was crossing from Asia 
to America; for, unlike most of his fierce clan, he 
hunted by day. Larger than that death-in-the-dark, 
the great-horned owl, or that fierce white ghost of the 
North, the snowy owl, he skimmed down toward the 
kelp -bed, his round, fixed eyes gleaming red and 
horrible in the sunlight. Muffled by the softest of 
down, his great wings, although they had a spread of 
nearly five feet, were absolutely noiseless. 

Not until the shadow of the bird, like the shadow 
of death itself, fell upon her cub, did the otter have 
the slightest warning of any danger. By that time 
it would have been too late for any other creature to 
escape. No animal, however, on land or sea can dive 
with the sea otter. Just as the crooked talons were 
closing, she slipped through the kelp into the water, 
without a splash, like something fluid, her cub clasped 
close, while overhead the baffled owl snapped its beak 
like a pistol shot, and flew on toward the Alaskan 
coast. 

Down through the swaying tangles she twisted her 
way like an eel, until she passed clear through the 
floating bed of this strange growth of the sea, which 
grows with its roots in the air. There the water 
darkened, and as she neared the bottom a shape 
flashed ahead of her, lighted with that phosphores- 
cence which all dwellers in the northern seas seem to 
acquire. The otter recognized the glowing figure 
as that of a sea bass, a bronze-green fish hardly to be 



SEA OTTER 175 

distinguished from the small-mouthed black bass of 
fresh water. The bass was no mean swimmer, but 
the long, oar-like, webbed hind legs of the sea otter 
twisted over and over each other like the screw of a 
propeller, and drove her through the water with such 
tremendous speed that, in spite of the handicap of 
the cub, she soon swam down the fish, following its 
every twist and turn, and in less than a minute had 
caught it in her blunt teeth. Then, with the plump 
fish in her jaws, she swam up again" through the kelp, 
and fed full, never for a moment, however, loosening 
her grip of her cub — for the babies of the sea folk 
who wander only a few feet from their mothers may 
never return. 

The meal finished, the great otter climbed out on a 
pinnacle of rock just showing above the kelp. Im- 
mediately from a miracle of lithe, swift grace, she 
changed into one of the slowest and most awkward 
of animals. The webbed flipper-like hind feet, which 
drove her with such speed through the water, were 
of very little use on land, and her tiny forepaws were 
so short that they seemed to have no wrists at all. 
Slowly and painfully she waddled up on the rock, 
and there preened and cleaned and combed and licked 
every inch of her fur just as a cat would do, until it 
shone in the sunlight like a black opal. 

As the weeks went by, the cub was trained in the 
lessons of the sea. He learned to enjoy salads of 
kelp-sprouts, and to dive with his mother to the bottom 
of ihe shallows, and watch her grind her way through 
the great clams of the northwest, whose bivalves are 



176 WILD FOLK 

a foot in width, or crunch with her pebble-like teeth 
into the white meat of the vast, armored crabs of 
those seas. Another one of her favorite foods was 
the sea urchin — that chestnut burr of the sea. Pro- 
tected by a bristling hedge of steel-sharp spines, 
it would seem safe from any attack. Yet, just as 
the squirrel on land opens without injury the real 
chestnut burr, so the sea otter had learned the com- 
bination which unlocked this little spiked safe of the 
sea, and devoured with much relish every one she could 
find. 

As the weeks went by, the larder of the kelp -bed 
began to empty. The clam-beds had been stripped, 
the sea urchins were gone, and the fish had learned 
to keep away. Little by little, the mother otter 
hunted farther and farther from the safety of the 
kelp ; until there came a day when, driven by hunger, 
she followed a fleeing pollock out into the open sea. 
The big gleaming fish, with the black line along its 
silver sides, swam far and fast. Yet, if the otter 
had not been hampered by her clinging cub, the chase 
would have been a short one. As it was, she did not 
overtake the fugitive until it was fully a quarter of a 
mile away from the kelp. In desperation it swam 
down into the lower depth, until the dull green of the 
water changed to black; but always the weasel of the 
sea was hard on its track, following the phosphores- 
cent trail which the fleeing fish left behind. 

Suddenly, as the pollock dived to even lower depths, 
in the hope that the water-pressure might drive back 
its pursuer, a grotesquely horrible head thrust itself 



SEA OTTER 177 

up from the darkness right in its path. Dark, and 
shining like wet rubber, the shape resembled nothing 
so much as that of a great, double-headed sledge- 
hammer. From either of the living hammer-heads 
gleamed a greenish, malignant eye. Before the 
pollock could dart aside, the great hammer-head shark 
turned partly over, there was a flash of sharp teeth, 
and the fugitive fish disappeared. 

A second later the ridged, gray, fifteen-foot body 
shot toward the otter, with such speed that the water 
fairly hissed from the scimetar-shaped side-fins. The 
sea otter is among the swiftest swimmers of the 
mammals, but no air-breathing creature can compete 
in speed with a shark. Almost instantly the hammer- 
head was upon her. The jaws of all the sharks are 
so undershot that, in order to grip their prey, they 
must perforce turn over on their sides. This pe- 
culiarity of their kind was all that saved the otter. 
For a second the grim head overshadowed her. Then, 
with a twist of its long tail, shaped like the fluke of an 
anchor, the shark turned over and the vast mouth 
swung open, armed with six rows of inch-long, steel- 
sharp, triangular teeth, whose edges were serrated 
like a saw. Each separate tooth was curved back 
toward the gullet,, so that for any living thing caught 
in their dreadful grip there was no more chance of 
escape than there would be from the interlocking cog- 
wheels of a stone-crusher. 

As the jaws of death gaped for the sea otter, with a 
writhe of her swift body she flashed to one side, while 
the little cub whimpered in her arms and the fatal 



178 WILD FOLK 

teeth of the shark just grazed her trailing, flipper- 
like hind legs, so close they snapped behind her. 
Swerving beneath the great bulk, the otter began a 
desperate flight for life. Every foot of the shark's 
gaunt, stripped body was built for speed. There was 
not a bone anywhere under his drab and livid skin — 
only rings and strips and columns of tough, springy 
cartilage, which enabled him to cut through the water 
like a blade of tempered gray steel. With the rush of 
a torpedo the grim figure shot after the fleeing otter, 
who had but one advantage and that was in length. 
It takes a six-foot body less time to turn than one 
that measures fifteen feet. In a straightaway race, 
the fish would have overtaken the mammal in a few 
seconds; but when it came to twisting, turning, and 
doubling, the sea otter had an advantage, albeit of 
the slightest. Again and again the desperate sea 
mother avoided death by an inch. More than once 
the ringing jaws of the great fish snapped together 
just behind her, and only the tiny tick of time which 
it took to turn over saved her. Desperately she 
sought to win the refuge of the kelp -bed; but always 
the gray shape thrust itself between her and safety. 

At last an ally of the sea folk joined in the hunt. 
Water was claiming her toll of oxygen from the 
alien within her depths. A sea otter can stay under 
for half an hour at a pinch — but not when swimming 
at full speed, with the laboring heart pumping blood 
at capacity; and this one realized despairingly that 
soon she must breathe or die. Little by little she 
shaped her course toward the surface, dreadfully 



SEA OTTER 179 

fearing lest the second she must spend in drawing 
one deep breath would be her last. She flashed 
upward through a whole gamut of greens — chrome, 
cedar, jasper, myrtle, malachite, emerald, ending with 
the pulsing, golden sap-green of the surface. Swim 
as she would, however, the monstrous head was always 
just at her flank, and the slightest pause would give 
those fatal teeth their grip. Once again she avoided 
by a hair's breadth a snap of the deadly jaws, and 
struggled despairingly toward the upper air. 

As the great fish turned to follow, out from the 
sunlight, through the gleaming water, shot a long 
dark body. Away from the safety of the kelp to the 
head of horror with its implacable eyes came the old 
dog otter, for the creed of the sea otter is unchang- 
ing — one mate for life and death. With his round 
misshapen head bristling and his snaky black eyes 
gleaming like fire, this one crossed the vast back of 
the shark like a shadow. As the great fish turned 
to follow the fleeing mother, the blunt pebble-teeth 
of the dog otter, which can grind the flintiest shells 
to powder, fastened themselves with a bull-dog grip 
just behind the last fin of the shark, where its long, 
sinuous tail joined the body. With all the force of 
his tremendous jaws, the great sea otter clamped his 
teeth through the masses of muscles, deep into the 
cartilage column, crushing one of its ball-and-socket 
joints. 

Like a steel spring, the shark bent almost double 
on itself. Just as the gaping jaws were about to 
close, with a quick flirt of his body the otter swung 



180 WILD FOLK 

across to the other side, without relaxing for an 
instant the grip of those punishing teeth. The 
undershot jaws of the great fish could not reach the 
head of its tormentor, fixed as it was in the central 
ridge of the shark's back. Again and again the 
hammer-head bent from side to side ; but each time the 
old dog otter evaded the clashing teeth and ground 
to bits joint after joint of the shark's spine, while the 
lashing tail-strokes became feebler and feebler. Not 
until the mother otter and her cub were safe on their 
way to the kelp -bed, breathing great life-saving 
draughts of fresh air at the surface, did the grim 
jaws of the old otter relax. Then, with an arrowy- 
dive and double, he shot under and over the disabled 
fish, and sped away to join his mate in the hidden 
thickets of the kelp. 

The swift Arctic summer soon passed, to be 
followed by the freezing gales of an Arctic winter. 
With the storms would come an enemy from the land, 
fiercer and more fatal than any foe that menaced the 
otter family by sea or sky; for these sea otter were 
among the last of their race, and there was a price 
upon their pelts beyond the dreams of the avarice of 
a thousand murky Aleuts and oily Kolash and 
Kadiakers, to say nothing of a horde of white 
adventurers from all the five continents of earth. 
Only in storms, when the kelp-beds are broken and 
the otter are forced to seek the shelter of beaches and 
sea caves, do hunters still have a chance to secure these 
rarest of all the fur-bearers. 

At last came the first of the great winter gales. 



SEA OTTER 181 

Day after day the wind howled up from the southeast, 
the storm quarter of that coast, and the air throbbed 
with the boom of breakers, while all the way down 
the Straits the white-caps foamed and roared among 
a tangle of cross-currents. 

Out at sea, the great kelp-raft on which the otter 
family had lived since spring was at last broken and 
scattered under the pounding of the gale. Otter 
need sleep as much as humans, and like them, too, 
must sleep where they can breathe. Battered and 
blinded by the gale, the little family started to hunt 
for some refuge where they might slumber out the 
storm. Along all the miles of coast, and among the 
myriads of barren islands, there seemed to be no place 
where they could find a yard of safety. At the first 
sign of bad weather every strip of beach was patrolled 
and every islet guarded. 

To lonely little Saanak the dog otter first led them, 
hoping to find some tiny stretch of safe beach among 
the water-worn boulders piled high along the shore. 
A mile to windward he stopped, thrust his blunt 
muzzle high up into the gale, and winnowed the salt- 
laden air through the meshes of his wonderful nostrils. 
Then he turned away at right angles, toward another 
island. A little band of Indian hunters, starved with 
cold, had built far back among the rocks a tiny fire. 

Smoke spells death to a sea otter. Beyond 
Saanak the wary veteran visited other beaches, only 
to detect the death-scent of human footprints, 
although they had been washed by waves and covered 
by tides. In far-away Oonalaska, he sought the 



182 WILD FOLK 

entrance of a sea cave in whose winding depths, many 
years before, he had found refuge. As he thrust his 
head into the hidden opening, his sturdy breast struck 
the strands of a net made of sea-lion sinews, so soaked 
and bleached by salt water that it bore even to his 
matchless nostrils no smell of danger. With a warn- 
ing chirp, he halted his mate following close behind, 
and backed out carefully, without entangling himself 
among the wide meshes. 

Agonizing for sleep, the little band turned back 
and journeyed wearily to the far-away islet of Attoo, 
the westernmost point of land in North America. 
In its lee was a sheltered kelp -raft never broken by 
the waves, although too near shore to be a safe refuge 
except in a storm. There, in the very centre of the 
heaving bed, with the waves booming outside, the otter 
family slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, their heads 
buried under the kelp-stems and their shimmering 
bodies showing on the surface. 

At the foot of a high bluff on Kadiak Island 
crouched Dick Barrington, on his first otter-hunt. 
Dick was the son of a factor of the Hudson Bay 
Company, which, in spite of kings and parliaments, 
still rules Arctic America. With him as a guide was 
Oonga, the chief of a tribe of Aleutian hunters. 

" Stick to old Oonga," the factor had advised. 
" He knows more about sea otter than any man in 
his tribe. At that there 's only one chance in a thou- 
sand that you '11 get one." 

The old chief had allowed the rest of the band to 
slip away one by one, each choosing the islet or bit of 



SEA OTTER 183 

shore where he hoped to draw the winning numher 
in this lottery of the sea. Hour after hour went by, 
and still the old man sat huddled under the lee of the 
cliff. At last, he suddenly stood up. Although the 
gale seemed still at its height, his practised eye saw 
signs that it was about to break, and in a moment, 
with Dick's help, he had launched the triple-pointed, 
high-sterned bidarka, a little craft made of oiled sea- 
lion skins, and as unsinkable as any boat could be. 

A few quick strokes of the paddle, and they were 
beyond the breakers. Then, straight across the bay, 
through the rush and smother of the storm, they shot 
toward Attoo. Steering by unknown ranges and 
glimpses of dim islands, old Oonga held his course 
unfalteringly, until, just as the gale began to slacken, 
they reached the kelp -bed in the lee of the little island. 
Across the hollow tendrils the old chief guided the 
bidarka silently, in a zigzag course. Suddenly he 
stretched out his paddle, and, touching Dick on the 
shoulder, pointed to a dark spot showing against the 
kelp a hundred yards away. 

With infinite care the two edged the canoe along, 
until there before them lay asleep the mother otter, 
her cub clasped tight in her arms. Even as they 
watched, the little otter nuzzled its small white nose 
against its mother's warm breast. As she felt its 
touch, without opening her eyes she clasped the cub 
tighter in her arms, with a curiously human gesture, 
and wrapped it close in her long silky fur, which had 
a changing shimmer and ripple through it like watered 
silk — a pelt with which a man might ransom his life. 



184 WILD FOLK 

As Dick gripped the short heavy club which the 
old chief had placed at his feet at the beginning of 
the voyage, and looked down upon the pair, it seemed 
to him as if the great sea had taken him into her 
confidence and entrusted the sleeping mother and 
child to him. Suddenly, in the silence, with sea and 
sky watching, he knew that he could no more strike 
down that mother sleeping before him with her dear- 
loved cub in her arms, than he could have killed a hu- 
man child entrusted to his care. With a quick mo- 
tion, he splashed the water over the sleeping otter 
with the end of his club. So swiftly that the eye could 
scarcely follow her motion, the great otter flashed out 
of sight under the kelp, with her cub still held close. 
Once again, mother-love had been too strong for 
death. 










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